


The Chains that Bind

by Azellma



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Open Relationships, PTSD, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-01-07 15:21:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 73
Words: 227,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12235527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azellma/pseuds/Azellma
Summary: Ten years after the Lone Wanderer sacrificed himself for the Capital Wasteland, Charon finds himself in the Commonwealth. Just his luck to end up with another damn vault-dweller, but better her than the Gunners...





	1. Contract

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about my Sole Survivor, but I couldn't find a head to sit in. And then I've been reading all these Charon fics lately, and wanted to write my own, and, well... I decided to combine the two. 
> 
> This fic at present is sitting at 100,000 words long. It's just that not all of those words are in the right places yet. I had this idea that I'd wait until I was finished to start posting, but full disclosure, I have no idea where this story is going or how it's going to end. Presumably it'll have to end eventually. I just haven't worked out how yet. I got impatient.

He didn’t even know of the danger until his employer’s head exploded under a sniper’s bullet.  
  
The pain shocked him, as it did every time, ripping through him in response to the death of the person he was meant to protect. Punishment for his failure. He fought to maintain his sight, fought against the ringing in his ears.  
  
The rest of the Gunners were alert instantly, hands on pipe weapons, assault rifles, lighting molotovs. Charon did not join them. His employer was dead, and through the red haze of pain the contract’s new demands presented themselves: find it, and put it into the first person’s hands that he could. He moved, and the pain began to ease.  
  
There were only six Gunners — five, now — in the group that had killed his previous employer and taken over his contract. Six had turned out to be more than enough to shoot him full of holes, and he had been unconscious for the death of his former master, a bloodthirsty monster he had not mourned. The Gunners mercenary gang drew a tougher, smarter sort than raiders, and they earned their reputation for being hard to put down. Whoever was picking them off now wasn’t wasting a shot. The Gunners were losing their shit trying to find them, yelling and firing into the bushes around their camp, but the sniper kept their cool. Another Gunner dropped with a bullet in her skull as Charon slipped into the lean-to where his employer had kept his possessions.  
  
The contract was in a heavy trunk, the lock simple but secure, and Charon pulled bobby pin after bobby pin from the matted hair of the Gunner’s corpse in his attempts to get it open. Gunfire sounded all around him, sniper shots replaced with shotgun as the invader picked their way closer to the camp, but he put it from his mind. What mattered was the contract. Anything else was so much noise.  
  
The bobby pin snapped in his hands, and he swore as he reached for another one. He froze as he saw the boot enter his field of vision, and realised the gunshots had stopped.  
  
“Need some help with that?”  
  
He looked up to see a tangle of dark hair, and eyes that were hard and curious. A sniper rifle was slung across the woman’s back, and she rested the barrel of a shotgun over her shoulder.  
  
He had not expected a woman. Half the Gunners had been women, but it was rare to see one working alone.  
  
Charon growled, and gestured to the trunk.  
  
“I need something in there. My contract.”  
  
She gave him a steady look, and nodded. “Okay. Put the shotgun on the ground, and step back.”  
  
She was wary of him, as she should be, shooing him away and eyeing him for more weapons before she crouched beside the safe and pulled a bobby pin of her own from her pocket. She had the lock open in moments, shooting him a look over her shoulder as she sorted through the contents, pocketing stimpaks, caps, ammo. Then her fingers closed over the contract, and he felt her ownership slot into place.  
  
She held it out to him, but he shook his head.  
  
“Read it.”  
  
He leant back against the wooden wall of the shack as she read silently, crouched on the floor like a child. There was something odd about her. Capable enough to take down six Gunners on her own, yes, and Gunners were tough bastards, but somehow she looked out of place, like she’d wandered in from another world. Something about the way her hair tangled, or her face… something vaguely old-world, almost pre-war, that spoke of extinct face creams and hair products. Too soft. She clashed with the world around her, but all the same the wasteland had tried to impress itself upon her: she had a nasty scar down the left side of her face, and thick kohl around her eyes. She flicked those eyes up to him as she finished the contract, and rose to her feet.  
  
“What’s this?”  
  
“You’re are the contract-holder now,” he said. “You are my employer, and I will do as you command. I’ll follow you, for good or ill.”  
  
“You’re… a slave?” She seemed shocked.  
  
He growled. “Not a slave.” He shifted his shoulders, uncomfortable; the chains of the contract may as well be steel. ‘Slave’ in all but name, but hell, it mattered. It mattered to him. “You own the contract. The contract says I work for you.”  
  
“But… This…” she gestured with the contract, her brows knitting, “what do I do? You’re not a _hireling,_ are you? It doesn’t say anything about dismissing you. Says here if the contract’s destroyed you _self-terminate_.” She grimaced. “That is _fucked up_. That’s… So I can’t burn it, or tear it up, or anything like that.” She shifted her weight to one foot, tapping at her bottom lip with one finger. “But there must be a way of… I don’t know, setting you free. Can I… sell you to yourself? Something like that?”  
  
“No. I can’t hold my own contract.”  
  
“Well, can I just… tell you to go away?”  
  
Charon grimaced.  
  
“You can, but I… would ask that you not do that.” It was always risky, making requests of a new employer, but he’d chance it to avoid an order like that. Then again, the reaction of most new employers wasn’t to immediately attempt to get rid of him. “The contract demands that I protect you, and that is difficult when you are not nearby. It would also be an endless order. Away has no set location. I would walk until I could not walk any more.”  
  
She blanched. “Jesus.” She looked down at the heavy parchment in her hand, worrying at her lip with her teeth. “That’s some bullshit, huh? This here…” she shook the contract with something approaching desperation, “this says you do _anything_ I tell you to. It says — here — it says you _can’t_ disobey. That you’re a weapon. That you will kill and die for me.” She met his eyes. “I don’t want that kind of power over another person. No one should have that sort of power over someone else. That’s not right.”  
  
Charon shifted his shoulders uneasily.  
  
“If you do not want the contract, you can sell it to someone else. The last person who sold it did so for two thousand caps.”  
  
She stopped short then, and narrowed her eyes at him. He couldn’t read her face.  
  
“The problem,” she said, “is that person who would buy this is not the sort of person who _should_. And frankly if you’re going to sell a person, or the… the rights to their service, whatever, I’d expect to be paying a lot more than just two thousand caps. Whoever sold you for that much didn’t have much respect for your capabilities.”  
  
“The last person who sold me got a bullet in the head the moment I was no longer in his employ,” Charon told her. “Being underpaid was the least of his problems.”  
  
She was weighing him in her eyes, contemplative. Her gaze wandered down to his boots, then back up again, across his shoulders, down his arms. Something changed in her face, became quiet.  
  
“Big fucker, aren’t you?”  
  
“Observant.”  
  
She laughed at that, a sudden lightness in her face, and she tucked the contract inside her leather jacket. The sense of ownership solidified in his mind, like claws on a trap; he knew then that she would keep it.  
  
“I’m known for my observational abilities.” She laughed to herself, leading the way out through the raider encampment, stopping from time to time to snag some bullets or caps from one of the corpses. “I’m getting used to the place now, but for a while I’d gape at everything. ‘That roach is huge!’ ‘That deer has two heads!’ Everyone was like, ‘well, duh’. I just…” She shook her head with a smirk. “Never mind.”  
  
He let this settle into his mind. “You’re a vault-dweller?”  
  
“Something like that.” She turned, and placed a hand on her hip. “Listen, this place is full of bullshit. Raiders and Gunners and the _Institute_.” She said it as if the word tasted sour. “You were scrabbling around for a piece of paper while the world went to hell around you. I could have popped you in the head.”  
  
“You didn’t.”  
  
“No. Never seen a ghoul Gunner before, is why. I thought they’d caught a slave, or something. I guess they kind of did.” She watched him, thoughtful, her eyes shining. “You’re really in my service now? You follow where I go, do what I say?”  
  
“Yes. Physical violence voids the contract between us; you cannot attack me or order me to injure myself. Everything else, I do what you say.”  
  
“What if you don’t want to?”  
  
He shrugged. “It does not matter. I follow orders. I cannot disobey.”  
  
“What do you mean by ‘cannot disobey’? Why not? What’s stopping you?”  
  
He huffed a sigh of exasperation.  
  
“The contract. I do not understand how it works, entirely. There was a period of indoctrination. Brainwashing. Refusal to obey results in… a degree of unpleasantness. That is all I know.”  
  
She studied him for a long time, weighing him, her hazel eyes thoughtful.  
  
“And you have to watch my back?” she said at last.  
  
“Protect the employer. That is the highest order. The primary directive.”  
  
“You didn’t protect the last guy.”  
  
“No. He was the first one you shot. He was dead before I knew there was any danger, and I was released from his employ. Unless ordered, I have no reason to protect anyone but the contract holder. Upon your death, assuming it precedes mine, I will take the contract and give it to the first person I find.”  
  
“I see,” she said. “Well… okay. Good, I guess.” She rotated a shoulder, wincing as the joint popped. She kept talking as he followed her out of the camp, her pace relaxed. “I travel with a friend or two, a lot of the time, but it’s good to get out on your own once in a while. Easier to be stealthy without anyone else around, you know? But I was getting a bit lonely. Good thing you showed up.” She laced her fingers behind her head, face angled up towards the sky. “You know, I was in the army, years ago. Just long enough to get my law degree. Thought it was a good way to work my way through school, and of course, there were plenty of hot men.” She flashed him a smile over her shoulder. “I saw some combat, but not as much as the infantry. I was a sniper, a technician, but really only a part-timer. Barely touched a shotgun until I found myself out here.”  
  
Charon just grunted. Not many of his employers had been talkative types, and fewer still had bothered talking to _him_. What had that smile been for? Was she mocking him? None of what she said made much sense. NCR had an army, he’d heard, but _law degree_ , what the fuck was that? He knew from experience vault-dwellers could be a bit weird, but…  
  
“You’re not going to compliment my aim, or anything? I made that Gunner’s head fucking _explode_.” Her abrupt cackle made him jolt. “You’re lucky I shot him first and not you.”  
  
“So are you,” Charon said plainly. “You might not have killed me, and I would have protected him.”  
  
“Was he a good employer?”  
  
Charon growled. “No.”  
  
“Why protect him, then? The contract?”  
  
“Yes. The contract is very… _emphatic_ about the protection of the employer.”  
  
“That must suck. Throwing yourself in front of bullets to protect some scumbag.”  
  
He said nothing. These were the unpleasant facts of life for him, things he largely chose not to agonise over. He did not enjoy having them picked at.  
  
Whether or not she seemed to realise this, his new employer backed off the subject. She travelled at a leisurely pace, stopping from time to time to play with the pip-boy on her wrist.  
  
“So what do I call you?” she asked after a while.  
  
“Charon.”  
  
“Like the boatman?” She shot him a bright smile. “Good name for a ghoul. Spooky. I’m Sloan.” She paused at the crest of the hill, looking down towards what had been the city of Boston, lost in the haze of distance. “You know the way to hell, Charon?”  
  
He knew a rhetorical question when he heard one, not that he was all that inclined to respond anyway.  
  
Another vault-dweller. Vault-dwellers were… twitchy.  
  
He’d had a good thing with the vault-raised Wanderer who had owned his contract in the Capital Wastelands. He’d been young, serious, and solemn, but not nearly cunning enough. One day, sensing his death somehow, he had sent Charon off with his contract in hand with the instruction to find an owner worthy of him.  
  
The order had… well, it had fucked him up. The kid was earnest enough that Charon imagined he’d given it with the best of intentions, but it was a bad idea all the same. He’d followed invisible trails over hills and valleys, veering off when whoever the contract had thought “worthy” had died. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t slept, either, but sleep was a rare luxury anyway. Then the Wanderer had died, the order with him, and he’d shoved his contract into the first pair of hands he saw. Not brave, not kind, and certainly not worthy.  
  
He had found out, later, that the Wanderer had sacrificed himself to bring clean water to the Capital Wasteland. Very fucking noble, and everything, but it hadn’t helped Charon.  
  
His new employer had been a trader. Many traders he had come across were not bad people. Hardened by the wasteland, yes, and wary, but good people. This was not one of them. The man had needed a guard, it was true, but there was something mercenary about him, and he’d had no trouble renting Charon to anyone who wanted a ghoul to practice on, whatever their proclivities. When the trader had been killed he’d passed to raiders, chem-addled psychopaths for the most part. They murdered one another in their sleep for his contract. It took some doing; he rarely slept himself and was constantly on guard, but nevertheless they managed to find a way to knife one another in the darkness. The last of them had overdosed, and Charon had handed his contract to another trader passing through the area. There was something deeply disturbing about the man’s gaze that made Charon glad he did not sleep, though he had never found out quite what it was that disturbed him. Eventually they had made their way here, only for the man to be murdered by some innocuous traveller looking to trade. He had seemed completely normal up until the point when he’d stabbed the trader in the eye.  
  
It had been ten years, give or take, of varying degrees of fucked-up sociopaths for employers since the Wanderer. He’d been… not a friend, exactly, but at least someone who had acknowledged Charon as a person, which was rare enough in his experience. The six months he’d spent with him had been almost comfortable. But he’d known it wouldn’t last. The boy didn’t have the edge to make it long in the Capital Wasteland, was too willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. People like that never lasted long. Charon hadn’t allowed himself to grow used to it.  
  
It had still hurt to be turned away. The final order was a bad one, stupid and careless and, from a different person, it would have been cruel. And it had felt like ground glass under the skin to be casually thrown away by someone he could have eventually grown to trust.  
  
This woman was, to the best of his knowledge, only the second vault-dweller to ever own his contract. She did not seem cruel, though she had dispatched the Gunners with a detached efficiency that was reason enough to be cautious. The wasteland was a hard enough place when one grew up in it; coming from the softness of life in the vault had a tendency to make vault-dwellers a bit unhinged.  
  
She seemed to be musing over something, chewing on her bottom lip.  
  
“I was going to stop in to Diamond City,” she said, gazing at the buildings in the distance. She shot him a look. “No ghouls allowed in there. You know that?”  
  
“No.” It did not surprise him; human settlements usually looked down on ghouls. Even those with no particular rules about it would tend to make life difficult for any ghoul that walked through its gates.  
  
“You been in the Commonwealth long?”  
  
“A month, perhaps. I never left the Gunners, and they never went that far east, or south. Heard them talk about Diamond City as full of soft marks. That’s all.”  
  
“Well… they weren’t wrong.” She huffed a sigh. “I wanted to talk to Nick, but I’ll be honest, I’d like to know you a bit better before I stick my neck out for you with the Diamond City guards. Never mind. I need to find more tapes for him anyway. We’ll head to Goodneighbor instead. I have some business there, and I like trading with Daisy more than anyone in Diamond City. You ever been to Goodneighbor, Charon?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“They accept ghouls there.”  
  
He gave her a hard stare.  
  
“I mean…” She rolled her eyes, mistaking his meaning. “They _should_ accept ghouls _everywhere._ But they don’t, so we get by best we can.”  
  
“ _We?_ ” He couldn’t keep the scorn from his voice, and for a second he was glad she couldn’t hit him. An old, old instinct.  
  
She looked at him over her shoulder, her gaze cool and steady.  
  
“You haven’t been to Goodneighbor,” she said.  
  
“So? What’s Goodneighbor? What’s _we_ to a smoothskin?”  
  
She turned then, one hip cocked. “ _Smoothskin_ , now?”  
  
“A ghoul word for humans.” He nodded to the skin of her forearm, pale and unmarked. “You must have met ghouls. The ones in Goodneighbor not talk to you much?”  
  
“They call me _sister_ ,” she said, and he saw something in her eyes then, like a hunger, a craving for something he couldn’t place. “They call me sister and they tell me _welcome home_. So shut your mouth and follow me, brother. Goodneighbor’s waiting.”  
  
The order thrummed in his mind. He shut his mouth. He followed her.

 

 


	2. Survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves...

They did not, in fact, head directly for Goodneighbor. Some other inclination had taken root in her, and she had swerved east. They had been walking for hours.   
  
At some point, she started to hum, a tune that got into his head and _twisted_ in the most irritating possible way. It wasn’t something he’d heard before. A brief spasm of curiosity made him want to ask her what it was, but the order had been to shut his mouth, so he said nothing.   
  
Eventually she stopped, her arms folded across her chest.  
  
“You’ve been quiet,” she said. “I’ve been trying to annoy you and everything.” She looked as though she wanted to poke him with a finger, but held herself back. “Why won’t you talk, big guy?” When he said nothing, her brows lowered. “Answer me.”  
  
“You told me to keep my mouth shut. I obeyed the order. I must obey orders.”  
  
An understanding settled across her features. Her mouth worked, as if she was berating herself, or thinking something through.  
  
“All right. Speak freely, Charon. Always know that you can speak freely.” She gestured to the dry earth around her. “To be honest, I’m still getting used to the whole ‘wasteland’ thing, and I need all the advice I can get. And for the love of god, please, when you’re going to interpret something as an order, can you let me know?” She rolled her eyes as she turned away. “Say ‘ _yes Sloan_ ’ or something. Otherwise I won’t know I’ve accidentally ordered you to do something.”  
  
He ground his teeth. “Yes, mistress,” he said automatically, and she stopped sharp in front of him.  
  
When she didn’t move for several breaths, he hesitated. “…Mistress?”   
  
“That… ah…” She gathered herself. “No one’s ever called me _mistress_ before.” She shot him a look over her shoulder, one he found difficult to interpret.  
  
He was silent.   
  
“You call everyone that, or what?”  
  
“You hold my contract,” he rasped. “You are my mistress. My employer.”  
  
“I’m not sure if I don’t like that at all, or if I like it far too much,” she said with a sheepish smile. “You have permission to call me Sloan, you know.”  
  
“Mistress,” he said again. It was easier; it was less personal. He tended to avoid names when possible. To call her something besides ‘mistress’ wouldn’t be _against_ the contract, but there was something of the contract in the term, all the same. Mistress, master. They were old, old words in his head.   
  
Sloan shrugged. “If you like,” she replied, and they set off again.   
  
She did not move like a vault-dweller. Not that the Wanderer wasn’t a talented shot, in his way, but the kid had been barely nineteen, and his inexperience had showed. This woman must have been nearly thirty, and for all she was apparently fresh out of the vault, there was a hint of steel in her that he hadn’t seen to begin with. Now he had been watching her for some time, he noticed a grace to her movement and an intelligence in her eyes that made him wary. A vault-dweller she might be, but the wasteland was in her now. She was a survivor. She carried that with her.   
  
Her weakness was that she talked too much. This was one weakness, at least, that the Wanderer had not shared.  
  
“First ghoul I met,” she was saying, kicking her toes into the dirt as she walked, “was right in the middle of Boston. I was trying to find Goodneighbor. In the dark, half the streets aren’t navigable any more, I didn’t know where I was going and I was scared shitless by the raiders and the super mutants… I didn’t even know what super mutants were then. I mean, fuck, I’d walked straight past Swan’s Pond somehow. No one even goes _near_ that place and I’d been through it three times before I found out why. Anyway,” she shook her head, “so I was crouched in the darkness with a vice grip on this old pipe rifle and this ghoul pops out of the darkness and I swear to god I screamed so loud they could hear me in Diamond City. I almost shot his head off. Once he talked me down I asked him the _rudest_ goddamn questions. You know, ‘what the fuck are you, are you going to eat me’, that sort of thing.”  
  
Charon growled quietly, and she chuckled.  
  
“Yeah, I know, I was an ass. But in my defence, I had no idea ghouls came in not-feral varieties. This,” and she turned towards him, tracing the scar down her face, “I got on day two. Went scavenging in a Super Duper Mart and there were ferals everywhere. It was a nightmare. Bad enough a normal apocalypse, let alone a zombie apocalypse, right? I lost my absolute mind. I used every bullet I had, not to mention the stimpaks. One of the tough ones got up when I thought it was down and scratched me. I was a gibbering mess afterwards. Spent twelve hours in a catatonic state in the basement.” She was grinning, a weird, lopsided grin like a screw somewhere in her mind had been twisted too tight.  
  
“Why did you leave the vault?”  
  
He was not usually one for questions, but he couldn’t help this one. He hoped she did not hear the note of criticism in his voice, the scorn he could not help running through his mind: _Stupid smoothskin. You were not built for this place. You should not have left the vault._  
  
She did hear it. For a moment, she was quiet, and then she turned and swore at him.   
  
“There was nothing _in_ the vault,” she said, her voice taking on an acid quality that made his nerves prickle. “There was _nothing_ in the _vault_. What was I supposed to do? You think I should have _stayed_ there? One day I will _show_ you the _fucking vault_ ,” she hissed. “You can see the corpses of _every other fucking person_.”  
  
They walked silence for another hour, until she spotted a tumble-down house, a dark shape against the pinks and oranges of the setting sun. There was still a stretch of roof, for all most of the walls had fallen in, and she surveyed it with a hand on her hip.  
  
“We stop here,” she said. “I’d prefer a place with actual shelter, you know, walls and junk, but at least it’ll keep the rain off our heads.” She dropped her pack, irritation still etched into her face.   
  
Charon did not apologise. He had spoken out of turn, and punishment may well be waiting in the future, but he would not apologise. He had few freedoms. Apologies were one of them. Unless an apology was demanded of him, he would never give it. The beauty of this, one of his few petty triumphs, was that an apology demanded of him would be, by its nature, an empty one.  
  
He was used to employers who hated him. He was used to hating them back. If this was going to be the case with this Sloan woman, so be it. One day she would die, or she would grow tired of him and pass his contract on, and he would be rid of her.   
  
When the fire was lit and burning low and warm, he heard a sound in the growing shadows, and lifted his gun, but Sloan raised a hand. It could be anything in the darkness, yet she sat, patient, unfazed. Moments later, a dog — more healthy looking than any he’d ever seen — bounded into their makeshift camp and dropped a dead molerat pup at her feet.  
  
“Hey, Dogmeat,” she said, scratching the animal behind the ear with a tired smile. “Aren’t you my clever boy? Did you bring us dinner, baby? Go and say hello to Charon, Dogmeat. He runs with us now.”  
  
As the animal sniffed him, wagging its tail, the smoothskin began to dress the molerat. She put the guts aside, presumably for the dog, and slid chunks of choice-looking meat onto skewers before setting them over the fire. She watched her dog through the flames, that tired smile still floating on her face.  
  
“Dogmeat’s his own man, but he sometimes comes back for dinner, don’t you, Dogmeat? He’s good in a fight, too. Just make sure you don’t shoot him. Almost blew him up with a grenade once or twice.”   
  
Charon nodded, lifting a hand to pat the dog’s side. He had very, very misty memories of a dog. Whether it was his, how long ago, the breed… these were all lost to him. But dogs were familiar, in a strange and half-formed way. It was not so much that he liked them — Charon did not really like anything except his shotgun, did not have room in his head for such luxuries — but he was aware of liking them once. This one, satisfied, moved to sit by their shared mistress on the other side of the fire, and he realised she had turned her attention from watching the dog to watching _him_.  
  
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she said. “I yelled. I’m sorry.”  
  
He shrugged.  
  
“It’s… Don’t ask me about the vault.”  
  
“Yes, mistress.” Not that he was all that inclined to do so, particularly after her outburst, but orders were orders.  
  
She cringed. “Jesus, I did it again. I have to stop that.” She rubbed a hand down her face. “Disregard that order. It… it was a request.”  
  
“Orders are expected,” he told her.   
  
“I know. And I know sometimes they’re necessary. But you’re... in a particular position. Right? Anyone else can hear an order and decide to disregard it. They can think ‘that was a shitty fucking order, I am not going to do that’. But you can’t do that, can you?”  
  
“I cannot.”  
  
“So I have to be careful about what I say, or I’ll send you wandering off a rooftop and won’t realise it. Like… if we’re in a fight and I give you an order but the situation changes… you have to be able to think on your feet and know the order was a bad one.”  
  
“In battle, I will defend you at all costs.”   
  
She nodded, and sighed. Her face was bleak.   
  
A sizzle came from the fire as fat dropped from the meat, and Charon found his mouth watering. He looked away from the morsels, into the night, and heard her shift as she pulled the roasted molerat from the fire. Boot scraped against gravel as she moved around to sit beside him, offering him a skewer.   
  
“Go on,” she said when he didn’t move. “Dinner.”  
  
She was… she was feeding him? Most barely gave him their scraps, feeding him only when they absolutely had to. Others made it a sport, watching him eat something disgusting for their amusement. He was used to rotten food, gristle, bones, whatever scraps were thrown his way. Not _meat_.   
  
Gingerly, he took the skewer from her, waiting for the catch.  
  
She gave him a bright smile, perhaps the most genuine he’d seen from her, and leant forward to snag one of her own from the fire. She bit into it with audible pleasure, lifting a hand to catch the juices running down her chin.   
  
“So,” she said after a comfortable silence, “how old are you?”  
  
“Older than you,” he growled.   
  
She laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said cryptically. “You gonna eat that, or what?”  
  
He did, and the meat was sweet and tender, seasoned with the creature’s fear and probably dog spit, come to that. He didn’t mind. It was meat.  
  
“It’s good,” he said, hesitantly.   
  
She beamed at him. “I’m glad. Mostly we survive on what we can find, but Dogmeat hunts, and I take meat from kills if I can. I have some deathclaw jerky in the pack somewhere. I still haven’t worked up the guts to try it.”  
  
Charon almost choked on his meat.   
  
“You killed a _deathclaw_? You _butchered_ a deathclaw?” He was impressed.   
  
“I have a system,” she said, picking a piece of meat from her stick. “First, you need a distraction. Dogmeat, you, whomever I happen to be travelling with. They distract the beastie while I sprint a distance away and pop a psychobuff. Heavy shit, I know, but whatever gets the job done, right? Sometimes a jet too if things look dicey. Then I whip out something that has kick and fires quick and I land as many rounds as I can before it gets to me. Usually I’m fine if I keep walking backwards — I usually manage to drop them before they catch up to me — but one day I just know I’m going to fall off the edge of a cliff or trip over something and then I’ll be dead.” She rolled her eyes, and grinned at him. “So it’s not exactly what you’d call a foolproof plan. It’s best to avoid them entirely, in my experience.” She threw her stick into the flames, and wiped her hands on her trousers. “Seriously, though… I don’t mean to pry, it’s just… When I meet a ghoul I always ask if they’re pre-war. Most of them like discussing the old days, but some of them don’t. I get that. You can just tell me you don’t want to talk about it. So… are you, or aren’t you?”  
  
Charon ground his teeth, and stared into the fire.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

 

 


	3. Ferals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who would have thought all those George Romero movie marathons would come back to bite you in the ass?

She slept in a sleeping bag, curled up by the wall under the small stretch of roof. The dog lay dozing beside her. Every so often it would raise its head, looking out into the night, and then lower it back onto its paws. Charon, as he had in his many years at the Ninth Circle, remained still and alert, passing his time in maintaining his gun, checking his armour, and musing over his new employer.   
  
Things could be worse. She was a significant improvement over the Gunners, though in a way, less predictable. At least hardass mercenary types were all more or less the same, and Gunners, while violent, tended towards the “sane” end of the spectrum. Charon tended to prefer an employer who was predictable, and vault-dwellers rarely fell into that category. Vault-dwellers as a whole were weird; vault-dwellers _outside_ the vault were unstable into the bargain.   
  
She woke just before dawn, pulling her knees up in her sleeping bag and checking her pip boy with a frown on her face.  
  
“It’s 5am,” she said, her voice croaky from sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me? You must be exhausted.”  
  
“I do not sleep,” he said.   
  
“Wha?” She switched a light on on her pip-boy, and he could see her blinking blearily at him, green light giving her face an eerie glow.  
  
“I can function without sleep for weeks or months at a time, if necessary,” he told her. “Many of my employers preferred I did not sleep. This does not affect my performance.”  
  
“…Jesus Christ.” She rolled up into a sitting position, sleeping bag slumping around her waist, and rubbed at her face with her hands. “Your employers were assholes.”  
  
“This… was often the case,” he admitted.  
  
She snorted. “Well, you should sleep. I’m used to splitting watches. I even do it with Dogmeat, don’t I buddy?” She stroked the animal’s head, and his tail thumped against the ground.  
  
“It is easier to protect you if I am awake. You need not be concerned. I am accustomed to living without sleep.”  
  
She looked at him with her forehead furrowed, and raised a hand to smother a yawn.  
  
“All right, big guy. If you say so.”  
  
She liked to be moving early, as soon as the horizon began to lighten in the east. The stars were still shining above as they finished packing up their camp.  
  
“I love the dawn,” she said as they set off. She took a bite out of a mutfruit, and tossed the rest to Dogmeat. “I remember back in the army, I was sitting on this ridge with my sniper rifle waiting for the light, so I could see this fucker well enough to hit him. Just… the waiting. I don’t know. It was peaceful. I waited a bit longer than I had to, just so I didn’t ruin the dawn.”  
  
It was, he had to admit, a pleasant time to be moving. Everything was still, cool, and the sky lightened through greys and purples and soft pinks until the last of the stars winked out as the sun rose.   
  
They picked their way across the wasteland, veering from the road. The dog had gone with the dawn, out into the wasteland to do whatever it was dogs did. Charon resumed his place two steps behind Sloan, and she turned back, every so often, to look at him, as if making sure he was still there. At one point he opened his mouth to tell her that if he were able to leave, he would have done so while she slept, but closed it again. There was no reason to antagonise her, however annoying he found it.  
  
It was long past noon when they happened across what had once been a settlement. It seemed deserted now, though a Mr Handy roamed the place, making nonsensical comments. It ignored them, so after a few moments of watching it float about in a daze, they elected to do the same.   
  
Sloan busied herself at a terminal, and Charon took point at the door, looking out over the hills.   
  
“It’s a nice spot here,” she was saying. “A good spot for a settlement. Quiet, lots of stuff already here. If we clean out the rad-roaches, maybe —” She broke off with a high-pitched scream and Charon spun to see a feral latched onto the back of her neck. Too close to her for his shotgun. He grabbed the thing around the throat and it hissed, flailing at him, until he threw it to the ground and unloaded a round into its chest.   
  
Sloan slumped against the desk, her chest heaving. After a moment she pulled out her pistol, and shot the creature twice in the head. The body jerked under each shot.  
  
“It’s dead, mistress,” he told her. She was shaking.   
  
“I know. Gotta double-tap. That’s a rule. Don’t want them getting up again when you turn around.” She was taking deep breaths, slow, actively calming herself. She kept an eye on the body of the feral as she re-loaded her pistol. “Thanks. I mean I know it’s what you do, but seriously. Thanks.”  
  
He watched her as her trembling eased, and fought to keep the sneer from his face. She was really so thrown by a feral? She had killed an entire group of Gunners by herself, and she was a mess because of one feral?   
  
“You have seen ferals before,” he all but scolded her. “Yet they still bother you. The second day, you said.”  
  
She grimaced.   
  
“Yeah. That fucked me up a bit, actually. You remember that town we passed? Lexington. There was a Super Duper Mart. That’s where…” She stopped, her mouth working like she tasted something sour. “I heard their… their _sounds_. They went straight to my lizard-brain. Too many zombie movies… I used to love them, we used to love them, me and Nate… I heard the sound and I panicked and I ducked into the Super Duper Mart. Then, I thought… good place to scavenge, right? Might as well. Find some food, maybe some bullets, and people buy things here. Buy them with trash, but they buy them. They even buy _old money_ , which is hilarious. They pay more for it than it’s worth. It’s incredible. So I thought… scavenge. And then I saw one on the floor.”  
  
He watched her throat move as she swallowed.  
  
“I know a zombie when I see one. And I know what to do. Double tap, straight to the skull, destroy the brain or the spinal cord. You have to be _sure_. So I shot one. Just a 10 millimetre, I only had that and a couple of pipe weapons I’d picked off some raiders at that point, I mean, I was still in my _vault suit_. So I shot it, and it bled. And I thought, that’s not right… zombies don’t bleed. They _ooze_. And then I heard this noise, and I turned around… You see, the thing about zombies is, they’re slow.”  
  
Charon knew little about zombies beyond the “walking corpse” designation and the insults that had been thrown his way over the past two centuries. But he supposed it would have been a hell of a shock to expect a feral to be a slow, shambling thing, only to have it dart at you faster than most humans could move.   
  
“I just kept shooting and shooting, and they kept coming. Every time I thought I was safe and I could scavenge for some more bullets, I’d straighten up from one of their corpses and there’d be another one in front of me. I screamed and every time I screamed more of them would wake up and hurl themselves at me. I tried creeping through the place and I kept finding more of them. I tried to shoot them before they hauled themselves off the floor but the shooting woke up even more. I had to keep going because I had no bullets, I needed to scavenge more before I even thought of trying to leave, but every time I found some I had to use them. There were more of them outside, I could see them through the windows. So many. By the end of it I was curled up in the basement with Dogmeat whining at me and I kept thinking, is it scratches that turn you? Or is it just the bites?”  
  
“Turn you?” He looked at her in confusion. “Into a ghoul? Smoothskin, there’s not enough radiation in them to do that. One of the Glowing Ones, maybe, but I think you’d have to eat it. Even then you wouldn’t be feral, not right away.”  
  
She huffed a laugh. “No, I mean zombies. That’s why they’re bad, see? The zombie apocalypse. They hunger, they bite, and everyone they bite turns into one of them. Exponential growth. In the flicks, you’d have a group of plucky survivors, one by one they’d fall behind, dragged into the horde, or they’d turn on one another, selfish and desperate and driven crazy by the hell around them. But the worst part would be if one of them got bit, and not realise until they were safe. They’d sit there with their friends in their safehouse and wonder how long it would be. Their friends would look around at each other and decide which one of them was going to shoot this guy in the head before he turned. Act of mercy. No one wants to be one of them. No one wants to sit there waiting for someone to go grey. So there’s me, in the basement, with my dog and no stimpaks and the only reason I didn’t shoot myself in the head right there was I was _all out of bullets_.”  
  
She cackled, and the sound was so twisted and sick after that story that Charon took a half-step away from her.   
  
“Anyway,” she said, laughter still shining in her eyes, “eventually I woke up out of my fugue state when Dogmeat started pawing at me, and I decided since they died when you shot them _anywhere_ they probably weren’t the living dead, and anyway that one had only scratched me… So I opened the cargo doors and I bolted the fuck out of there. Ended up with a pack of them chasing me, and I heard some gunshots and figured I’d risk it. Stumbled onto some Brotherhood of Steel guys. Still not sure how I feel about them, but they patched me up in exchange for beating a few ferals to death with a baseball bat so they’re probably not all bad.”  
  
“They cannot be trusted,” Charon grumbled.  
  
“No, probably not. But never mind.”  
  
“You beat ferals to death with a baseball bat?” He was almost impressed.  
  
She gave him a shy grin. “I decided to try psycho. I mean… what was the worst that could happen?”  
  
Telling her story seemed to have settled her nerves, and she slipped her pistol back into its holster at her hip, replacing it with a heavy shotgun she pulled from her pack. She led the way out into the middle of the settlement, and paused, shotgun under her arm. She toyed with her pip-boy a moment.  
  
“I’ve discovered if you put some music on loud enough, you can draw ‘em out,” she said, turning on her radio. “Get ready.”  
  
 She turned the music up as loud as she could. She had picked an appropriate piece: sweeping, invigorating, electrifying. Like impending battle.   
  
“I love this song,” she shouted over the music. “Ride of the motherfucking Valkyries! Come get some you undead cocksuckers!”  
  
The ferals came. There were perhaps a dozen of them, crawling out from under upturned bathtubs, tottering through doorways. Charon began to wonder whether she put this music on solely to draw them out or whether that was an excuse, whether she had truly done it to steel herself for fighting them. He saw the determination in her eyes, as well as the fear, and as one reached her she lifted her shotgun and blew its head from its shoulders.   
  
Between the two of them, they managed to kill the ferals before any got close enough to cause any trouble. One almost reached her, and he saw the tension in her jaw as she leant away from its flailing arms before he cracked it over the head with the butt of his gun and it crumpled to the ground. When Sloan had unloaded her shotgun in the chest of the last one, she turned her radio off and sank down onto her knees.   
  
“I hate those things,” she said, her voice strained. She was bent double, her forehead hovering above the ground. “It’s easier to call them to you than to wander around and have one materialise by your ear but still, _holy shit_.”  
  
Charon shifted from foot to foot. After her tale about the Super Duper Mart he was feeling more accommodating toward her fear, but he did not know how to deal with her curled up on the ground.   
  
“Smoothskin —”  
  
“Just give me a minute,” she said.  
  
He did. It took more than thirty seconds for her to realise she had given him an order, and she looked up at him with wide eyes.  
  
“I did it again, didn’t I?”  
  
Fifteen more seconds. Charon nodded.   
  
“That is surprisingly hard to avoid,” she said, and sighed. “Help me up— _fuck I did it again_.”  
  
“You should not let this bother you,” he told her, wrapping a hand around her arm and pulling her to her feet. “Orders are expected.”  
  
She waved a hand. “I still have to be aware of it. I can’t go _accidentally_ giving you orders, that’s just asking for trouble.” She dusted herself off, and looked around the settlement with a sigh. “I guess we should check to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Let’s crash here tonight. It’s been a while since I slept in an actual bed.”  
  
Charon left her to check the houses while he hauled the corpses of the ferals some distance off. He heard some shots, but when he looked back he saw her kicking radroaches off the porch of a house, and left her to it. By the time he had finished his task she had built a fire-pit beside the porch, and the dog had returned from its sojourn in the wilderness to sit beside her, wagging its tail.  
  
“You eat radroaches?” she asked as she saw him approach.   
  
“I have eaten worse.”  
  
She grinned at him, and picked up a stick to flick one over on the coals. “They’re not bad, actually. Haven’t tried them raw, but cook ‘em in their shell and they have a sort of weird smoky flavour. There’s a lot of meat on one of these fuckers. When you think about it, it’s not really that much different from eating crab.” She levered one out of the fire, and cracked its shell open. “Pre-war crab, anyway.”  
  
She was pulling meat from the roach with her fingers, licking them clean after each morsel. When he didn’t move to help himself, she nudged the shell towards him, and smiled at him over the fire.  
  
“Go on. You don’t have to wait for me to say you can eat. We don’t stand on ceremony here, do we, Dogmeat?”  
  
The dog’s tail thumped against the ground, his mouth lolling open, until she threw him a roach leg and he settled down to crunch on the hard shell.  
  
“You going to stand watch all night again?” she asked Charon as he lowered himself to the ground across from her.  
  
He nodded, pulling a chunk of meat from the radroach. “Unless you order me otherwise.”  
  
“Is that something I should be doing?” She picked up her stick and flicked the second radroach out of the fire. “Should I order you to get some rest?”  
  
He looked up at her in surprise.   
  
“You do not need my _permission_ to give an order,” he said, a little exasperation creeping into his voice. “If you command me to sleep, I will sleep. Otherwise, I will keep watch.”  
  
She was frowning, a deep line creasing the skin between her eyes.   
  
“If that’s what you want.”  
  
“It does not matter what I want.”  
  
She sighed, but said nothing, and they finished their meal in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I too entered Super Duper Mart with far too little ammo and stimpaks.
> 
> On popular culture: I'm trying to make some educated guesses as to what would have remained the same or similar after the branching of time between our universe and the Fallout universe. Night of the Living Dead was 1968 and I think zombie movies would have had some traction in their universe too or people wouldn't use the word as an insult. It's also interesting to contemplate what might have survived the war - there are only around 30 tracks on the radio because of licensing reasons but how much music would they have access to outside of that? Do the old ghouls have karaoke nights where they try to remember the words to songs no one's heard in 200 years? Are there old mix tapes hiding in the ruins somewhere?


	4. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Commonwealth has some interesting weather.

She slept that night on one of the beds in the house by the fire, her dog sprawled out on the other. Charon sat on the porch steps with his gun on his knees, and thought.  
  
She was a strangely conscientious thing, this one, with her concern over orders. He did not trust her yet, did not understand her motives, and plenty of employers in the past had turned out to be very different people than their first few days together had implied. Still, she seemed thoughtful, considerate, even friendly. She also seemed to trust _him_ , and that was interesting. True, he could not harm her, had to protect her; employers could always trust the _contract_ , if not Charon himself. But she talked to him. She trusted him with information, with things that, if he wanted to, he could have used against her.   
  
She had curled up in a little ball of terror and told him of a moment that had scared her, had scarred her. The first proper scar the wasteland had given her.   
  
Wounds did tend to scar worse the longer one waited to use a stimpak, but the one across her eye was nasty. That had been stitched, and no stimpak could do anything for it now. He wondered briefly whether she had stitched it up herself, but no. A vault-dweller, her first week in the wasteland? No. The Brotherhood of Steel, no doubt. Plenty of women would have cried over a scar like that, marring their pretty faces. It didn’t seem to bother her.   
  
He was facing west, so he did not see the clouds blowing in off the sea until they were overhead, dark and ominous. He shifted back under the veranda, and waited for the storm to burst. When the rain fell in a sparse scattering of fat drops, it brought with it a green mist, and Charon pushed himself to his feet and held a hand out from under his shelter in astonishment. The raindrops that fell onto his hand hummed with the familiar warm energy of radiation.   
  
An irradiated storm was a new thing to him. All water was dirty in the wasteland, but some water sources more than others, and he had never before been in a storm that brought with it anywhere near this level of radiation. The Commonwealth had strange weather indeed.   
  
A flash of green lightning lit up the sky, and he would have grinned at the tingle of radiation that shot through him if it had not been accompanied with a screech that set his teeth on edge.  
  
He darted into the building, gun at the ready, but there was no feral, no radroach crawling over his employer while she slept. She was sitting bolt upright, her hair dishevelled, her jaw set. There was another flash, and she made the same high-pitched screeching sound, and jumped to her feet. The dog was prancing beside her, whining, scratching at the ground.  
  
“Rad-storm! You didn’t wake me! Why didn’t you wake me? It —” She shrieked as another flash of lightning dumped a heavy dose of rads on the both of them, and Charon moved to slam the door, grabbing her sleeping bag to stuff into the cracks underneath it. Too much radiation for a smoothskin, far too much. The contract pressed in on his mind.  
  
“Don’t bother, it doesn’t work,” she said, gathering up her pack. “I’ve tried that before. Radiation still gets in. We need to — _ow Jesus fuck I fucking hate these storms_ — we need to find somewhere sealed, a bunker or something, there’s one a little ways south of here. Grab everything, come on!”  
  
She popped a rad-X as they went, but the lightning still seemed to pain her; she hissed through her teeth at every flash, and once or twice she stumbled, reaching out for his arm to steady herself. They found the bunker, or tunnel or whatever it was, in the floor of a church. It had once been defended, and she kicked aside the bones of a long-dead soldier to heave the trap door open.   
  
Charon climbed in after her, reaching up to get the dog and toss him to the ground before grabbing the handle of the trap door and pulling it shut. There was darkness. He waited, heard the distant rumble of thunder, but no radiation seeped its way through. He exhaled, and climbed the few remaining rungs to the ground.  
  
Sloan had found a lamp at the bottom of the ladder, and she lit it, setting it to one side so it threw light into her face. She looked tired and drawn, and he was not surprised when she pulled a radaway from her pack and leant closer to the lamp to find a vein. When she had wormed the needle into her elbow, she hung the bag from a nail on the side of the ladder, and settled back against the pale brick of the tunnel wall.   
  
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked him again. She looked very small down there on the ground, and Charon lowered himself to sit against the wall across from her, stretching his legs out until his boots scraped against the opposite wall beside her.  
  
“I did not know there was radiation in the storm,” he said. “This is the first I’ve seen so near to the coast. There are no storms like this inland, even as close to the ocean as DC. They must dump their radiation before they get that far, or perhaps the radiation affects how far the storm can travel.” He shifted, uncomfortable. Almost guilty. “I did not know,” he repeated.  
  
“It’s okay.” She rubbed at her face. “Wake me, next time.”  
  
“Yes, mistress.”  
  
“I know that’s probably an order. Should I take it back?”  
  
“No. Orders are expected.”  
  
She sighed, and wiped a trace of blood from the inside of her elbow, where the needle sat under the skin. “Rad-storms feel like an electric shock. An electric shock that makes you want to throw up. Although I guess for ghouls they’re a lot more entertaining.” She closed her eyes. “First one I got caught in scared the hell out of me. Darted inside a house and it didn’t do shit. Ended up in a pool of vomit on a basement floor. Lucky a raider didn’t come along before I managed to get some radaway into me. This shit gives me headaches, but whatever. That’s what med-X is for. Problem is it’s such a pain in the ass to administer.” She traced the line up from her elbow, and prodded at the bag.   
  
Dogmeat lay at her side, his head on her lap, and she stroked the sleek fur on his head until Charon thought she had fallen asleep.   
  
He studied her face in the lamplight. The scar across her eye, the smooth skin, the shine to her tangled hair. She was a handsome woman, in a way. She had a sharp jawline, a small straight nose, high cheekbones. She still seemed, to him, deeply out of place here. Most wastelanders were small, wiry, tough. Generations of an irradiated world had changed them. Vault-dwellers were different. Better nutrition and a life without violence made them soft but well-built, tall, with strong bones. Healthy-looking. Healthy _physically_ , anyway. Healthy in the head, not so much.  
  
He let his eyes wander down the length of her arm, past the needle, along the smooth white stretch of her forearm, veins blue against her wrist. That skin was almost fascinating to him. No wastelander had skin like that, almost translucent, unmarked. He almost wanted to hold his own arm up against it, just to see the contrast, to see if she looked any more ethereal against the ruin of his own flesh. He sucked the inside of one cheek between his teeth, biting down just a little, and smirked at himself. A fucking foolish thought; childish, impulsive.  
  
It was strange, though. She didn’t seem to mind when he was close to her. If he _wanted_ to hold his arm up against hers, she probably wouldn’t chase him away. She hadn’t shirked at the contact when he’d helped her to her feet, and he’d wondered if she would, especially after the feral in the barn. So strange. She talked of ghouls who called her _sister_ instead of smoothskin, she looked at him like he was human, she sat beside him by the camp fire. She did those things, yet the ferals scared the shit out of her. That made no sense to him.  
  
When he glanced back at her face, he saw her eyes were open. She was watching him with a quiet passivity, a soft smile on her lips.  
  
“Something’s gnawing on you,” she said at last.   
  
“No.”  
  
She nudged him with the toe of her boot, her smile widening. “Go on. Something’s in your head. I won’t be upset if it’s something I said or did. If we’re going to function together, you’re going to have to let me know when I fuck up. I’ve never been in this position before and I don’t know how it works. I’d like to avoid making you resent me any more than you probably already do.”  
  
He gave her a long stare.  
  
“What makes you think I resent you?”  
  
She shrugged, and pressed a hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. “Hey, if I was forced into the service of strangers, I’d resent them, too. I’d resent the fuck out of anyone holding my contract. So resent away, I guess. Just… seriously, I’d like you to tell me if I say or do something that makes you uncomfortable. I don’t want someone following me who hates my guts, and I don’t want to be doing something that bothers you without realising it.”  
  
“It is not your fault I am in this position,” Charon said begrudgingly. “I do not resent you for holding my contract.” Which was mostly true. He also did not trust her, or particularly like her, but he knew very well that it could be worse.   
  
_She cooked for you_ , said a voice at the back of his mind. _She speaks to you, smiles at you. You like her fine, Charon. As employers go._  
  
“You’re a bigger person than me, then,” she said.  
  
He shrugged. “I have grown used to it. I have… it has been a long time. More than a century. Perhaps two.” He looked over at her. She had closed her eyes again, her head resting back against the wall of the bunker. “You wish me to speak freely?”  
  
“Yes. I said that yesterday. You can always speak freely. You’re not my slave. You can talk back.” There was a smile hovering on her face. “I won’t get mad.”  
  
He’d believe that when he saw it. Still… something _had_ been gnawing at him.   
  
“Ferals bother you,” he said.  
  
“They give me the heebie-jeebies.”  
  
“But I do not.”  
  
She sat up and looked at him, right in the face. Her forehead furrowed.  
  
“No, Charon, of course not.”  
  
“I look like them.”  
  
“No. No, you don’t. Not really.” She shrugged, and slumped back against the wall. “Their limbs are different, the way they stand, their faces. And anyway you don’t come up behind me going _oooarrrgkk_ and trying to bite my face off. Zombies aren’t scary because they look gross, they’re scary because they _try to eat you_.” She pulled her legs up in a tailor's seat, and reached down to pick at her shoelaces. “Ghouls don’t look gross. That came out wrong, I didn’t mean to imply that. Some of the ferals do, they’re all body-horror, walking around with their arms melted to their torsos, shit like that. Normal ghouls don’t.”  
  
He grinned at her humourlessly, and knew the expression must be horrific in the low light. All the better.   
  
“Smoothskin, I have seen myself. You do not offend me.”  
  
She frowned, and shook her head. “Well it offends _me_.” She sighed. “Anyway, it’s not about the way they look. It’s the rest of it. I mean… On some level, a lot of ghouls must fear becoming feral. Their minds rotting away, turning into husks. It’s the zombie thing. Zombies bite you and turn you into them. It’s the same fear, of losing your humanity, your soul. They bite you, you sicken, you turn into one of them, you try to eat your friends. You turn into the plague that destroys the world, every person that falls swelling the ranks of the enemy. Becoming mindless, becoming cannibalistic, losing all control of yourself with no memory of who you were or the people you loved... It’s the same fear. The fear of becoming the monster. The fear of mindlessness. It just happens faster, with zombies, than turning feral.”  
  
He studied her, leaning back against the wall. “You fear zombies,” he said, “but ferals are not zombies.”  
  
“I _know_ they’re not zombies. But when one of them goes _oooarrrgkk_ in my ear, they fucking _sound_ like zombies. They _act_ like zombies. And the part of my brain in control of screaming and running away doesn’t make any distinction.” She stopped picking at her laces, and straightened her back against the wall. “If I’d never seen one and you’d just told me about them, they’d still bother me. After the Super Duper Mart, they scare the absolute _shit_ out of me. We all have our,” she rolled her eyes, “little foibles. Don’t — I mean, I’d prefer it if you didn’t make fun of me for this. This isn’t, like, oh, the big tough scavver’s scared of radroaches. Ferals genuinely upset me.”  
  
“I am not making fun, mistress,” he said.   
  
That would have been a reasonable order to make, had she phrased it as one: the new employer setting some boundaries. That was expected. In fact she had set very few boundaries. He would even prefer a few, just so he knew where he stood. There was only “speak freely”, which wasn’t much of a boundary at all.  
  
“You could have ordered me not to make fun of you,” he pointed out. “You did not.”  
  
“And you’re wondering why?” She raised her brows in question, and he nodded. “I said already. You’re not my slave.”  
  
“I am in your service.”  
  
“Yes.” Her mouth twisted, and she dropped her eyes to pick at the laces of her boot again. “I loot a Gunner campsite and pick up a piece of paper, and now we’re stuck together. For good or ill, as you say. You can’t get rid of me, and I don’t intend to get rid of you, because there’s a lot of shitheads in this wasteland and there are very few people who wouldn’t order you to, you know, drench yourself in the blood of the innocent. Or worse.” She shifted her shoulder-blades against the bunker wall. “We’ll get to know each other as we go. It’ll just take a little while to work out how we fit.” She slid her fingers into Dogmeat’s fur. “And I’m trying, with the contract. I get that I’m fucking it up, but I’ll get the hang of it. You’ll just have to be a little patient with me in the meantime.”  
  
He stared at her. Then he looked away, and ground his teeth.  
  
“Smoothskin, I am not your _friend_.”  
  
“No, I get that. Like I say, I’d understand if you resented me.”  
  
Charon huffed a sigh through the hole where his nose had been. _Speak freely_.  
  
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said to her. “You have not set boundaries. You dislike giving orders. You are my employer, and I will do as you command, yet you make no commands.”  
  
“ _I_ don’t know what I want from you,” she said with a huff of frustration. “I didn’t expect you to land in my lap. I don’t have plans for you. I don’t need a guard or a… or whatever it is you did for other employers. When I travel with people, we watch each others’ backs and explore and kill things together. Now I’m travelling with you, so…” She shrugged. “I have no plans to make you into anything other than that. A travelling companion. Someone to fight with. Someone to watch my back. And I don’t want to go imposing my will on you all the time.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because it’s cruel. You’re a _person_.” She spread her hands. “I’m not a fucking _monster_ , Charon, and I’m not going to let myself turn into one. You have this thing in your head or whatever that means you can’t live your own life, and that’s _fucked up_. I don’t want to be a part of that, and I am, and I’m trying my goddamn best to give you as much leeway as I can and I keep doing it wrong. I say something and you do it and then hours later I wonder whether you did it because you wanted to or because I accidentally pushed your buttons and _made_ you do it. I don’t want to _force_ you. I don’t want to end up the kind of person who treats people like they’re _things_. This whole fucking deal is abusive, I hate that I’m a part of it, and I hate that I can’t stop it.”  
  
“I have angered you.”  
  
“You didn’t anger me. The fucking situation angered me. The contract angers me. Whoever —” She cut herself off and took a deep breath, turning her head toward the darkness of the tunnel. “You do fine, Charon. You don’t anger me.”  
  
He followed her gaze down into the tunnel, roiling with bitterness and confusion.   
  
“I’ve told you nothing,” he growled, more than himself than to her, and dropped his eyes to the floor.  
  
“Yeah... Well, I’ve seen some shit, okay?” The anger had seeped out of her voice, leaving it quiet, tired. “I know the kind of people that are out there. I’ve killed some of them myself and I’ve seen the shit they left behind. You say to me you were indoctrinated, that you can’t even remember if you were around before the war, that your employers didn’t let you _sleep_. You don’t eat until I actually tell you to eat. That’s some deep, ingrained levels of fucked up.”   
  
She was watching him, he could feel her eyes on him, but he did not look up.   
  
“You don’t eat, I figure something bad happened if you looked too longingly at food. You can’t remember how old you are, that tells me that either life was bad enough or boring enough that time bled together, or that there’s a big nasty roadblock somewhere along memory lane that you can’t go past. You told me nothing? You told me plenty.”   
  
He looked at her then, disconcerted. She said so much of what she was thinking out loud that he had not considered how much she might be keeping to herself.  
  
“You are perceptive,” he said at last.   
  
“Sniper,” she said, throwing off a lazy salute. Then she laughed. “You _did_ call me observant, remember?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your support so far! I really appreciate every comment and kudos <3


	5. Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon's got more issues than Astoundingly Awesome Tales

He had been with her for weeks, and they were starting to get the hang of one another.  
  
She was, by and large, a good employer. She was careful about her orders, but, after some trial and error between them, not unwilling to make some when she deemed it appropriate. She was a good shot, a smart tactician, and generous to the people of the Commonwealth. Most of all, she was genuinely respectful of his person, which meant a great deal to him. It had been far too rare in his long lifetime, and he cherished it. She still talked too much, but she seemed aware that he was not inclined to talk himself. Charon had to admit to himself that she was not a bad person to work for.  
  
They had been trekking over the wastelands, stopping in at settlements she knew, to trade and ask if there was anything they needed. Often there was some group of raiders or some ferals that were endangering the place and needed to be cleared out, and Sloan would listen with a solemn face and then agree to help them.  
  
“I don’t know why I do it, sometimes,” she’d said as they made their way back to a settlement after one such escapade. “These idiots are out here in the middle of nowhere with pipe guns and a handful of ammo, no defences, no capability of defending themselves. I feel like I have to do it all myself. I say, look, guys. You’re going to actually need some defences here. Set up a lookout post, at least. Practice your aim. That way you don’t have to choose between sitting tight and hoping I turn up to save the day or lying down and dying.” She’d made a tutting sound at the back of her mouth and dug the toe of her boot into the dirt. “They’d be better off in Diamond City but I can’t blame them for not wanting to live there, and _someone_ needs to farm. And then I think… it’s kind of brave, that they’re out here. Doing what they enjoy. Being free. I can respect that. Just, damn, learn to _shoot_ , would you? I swear, I don’t know why I do it.”  
  
 Charon didn’t know, either. These were weak people, and on some level it annoyed him that they persisted in nagging her for help instead of protecting themselves. And yet he had to admit to himself that they were relatively innocent. There was no reason to let them be killed by raiders, or overrun by ferals. Not when something could be done about it. They were trying to build their own lives out here. It was wrong to let them get murdered for a handful of caps and some tatos.  
  
“Someone has to do it,” he had said at last, and her back had straightened at that.  
  
Now they were making their way back west, to a farm she knew. They had cleared out a bunch of raiders, and when they explored the base she had found a necklace that she recognised. This was _important_ , in much the same way that things used to be important to the Wanderer, and this bothered Charon because the Wanderer had been a bit unhinged. He had gone in search of petty trinkets for small, pathetic people and that had almost gotten him killed more than once. Given the choice, Charon would rather be with a bleeding heart idiot than a brutal murderer, but it was still a pain in his ass. He didn’t want the first decent employer he’d had in ages to die because some kid really missed her fucking teddy bear.  
  
Perhaps it was a vault-dweller thing, this impulse to go chasing after small items, to be pickers-up of trinkets and trash. This one certainly seemed way too keen to keep every useless item she came across.  
  
“Their daughter stood up to them,” she said, winding the locket’s chain around her wrist. “So they killed her, took her necklace. I can’t work out if she was brave, or stupid.”  
  
“Both.”  
  
“Yeah, probably. I kind of admire her. She was only a kid. Her sister wants to learn to shoot, to… I don’t know, do what I do, I guess. Run around taking out raiders, make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to someone else. But her family are too scared of losing their only remaining daughter.”  
  
“That is why you do this? To save the people who would try and fail?”  
  
“That’d make me sound like a pretty good person, huh?” She gave him a lop-sided grin. “To start with I just did it because they paid me. Caps are caps, and when I started out I had nothing at all, just a vault-suit and a pistol, so I did anything that would earn me money. You won’t believe some of the shit I did. Got green paint for some guy to give a new coat to the walls of Diamond City. I mean it’s _paint_. I had to kill a whole gang of raiders, for _paint_. The fucking world has ended, who cares what colour the walls are? But he paid me, so I did it. Then the guy started talking about the walls as if they were _alive_ and had _feelings_ , and I just smiled and nodded because Nick Valentine was standing behind me and I didn’t want him to think I was an asshole.”  
  
Nick Valentine, a name that had come up once or twice but about whom Charon had never bothered to enquire.  
  
“The walls meant something to this guy and _that_ meant something to _Nick_ , and I’ll walk through fire for Nick. I started doing things for money, and I kept doing them because it made Nick happy, and I’m still doing them because now I know these people. I’ve bought their crops and helped them build things. I check on them to make sure things are going OK and fight off their raiders and educate their illiterate asses.” She paused, scanning the horizon. “A part of me would rather watch them try and fail. Like they’d learn more that way, become more competent, or they’d die and serve as an example to others. But… you gotta help build the world you want to see, I guess. I’ve filled my life here with people who work their hearts out for the underdogs of this world and every day I find myself trying to be worthy of…” her hand fluttered through the air in a vague gesture, “…of being a part of their lives.”  
  
They walked in silence for a while. To start with he had walked behind her, two steps behind, as some former employer had wished and none since had bothered to change. But this one liked to see his face when she spoke, and he had become accustomed to walking beside her, or even ranging ahead when the situation called for it. Now she looked up at him with the expression he had come to associate with her asking of a question she knew he would not like.  
  
“What would _you_ do, if you were me?”  
  
“If I were you?”  
  
“You know. If you had crawled out of a vault into a different world… if you had to start over. If no one knew you. What would you do?”  
  
Charon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Find an employer.”  
  
She snorted. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair enough. Big guy like you, easy to find work as a guard or something. I think I prefer scavving. I like the changes of scenery. Exploring the new world. That sort of thing.”  
  
“That is not what I meant. I must always have an employer.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” she said, and sighed.  
  
The farming family fell over themselves when she handed them the locket. The father had tears in his eyes as he pressed a bag of caps into her hands, and offered her a discount on trading, a place to spend the night, whatever she might like. She took them up on that, and they spent the afternoon tracking down a group of radstags to contribute to the evening meal. Between the two of them, as the sun set behind them, they dragged the carcass back to the farm to be butchered.  
  
That night, they climbed up on the roof to find some privacy. Lookout stations had been erected here from wood: short walls for cover, roofs, chairs. Sloan rolled out her sleeping mat, and went to sit out on the corrugated iron of the roof, still warm from the day’s sun.  
  
“You see why I like this family?” the mistress said, sitting back and looking up at the stars. “They’re prepared. Food, water, defences… They have a good set-up here.”  
  
They had. There was even a generator — or perhaps they somehow got their power from the electricity pylon under which they had built their house. Either way, they had lights strung along the edge of the roof, hanging from the lookout posts. It was impractical, even dangerous; the lights would make sentries too visible, and harm their night vision. Sloan seemed to find them charming, so Charon said nothing.  
  
He had acquired the habit of cleaning her guns as well as his own, as it was a task she avoided with a childish stubbornness. She had not asked him to do it, but his life and hers depended on well-maintained guns. And it was meditative. It quieted the mind. He did not mind the additional workload.  
  
When he had finished with her combat rifle, and set it aside, he looked over to see her reading through his contract again. She must have had it memorised by now, yet still she ran her eyes over it, chewing on her bottom lip.    
  
“You’ll wear the paper,” he grumbled at her, reaching for her pistol.  
  
“It’s not paper,” she said, and he paused, tilting his head slightly to one side as he looked at her. “I thought it was, at first, but there was something about the way it feels in the hand that bothered me. I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. It took me a while to work it out. It’s not paper. It’s vellum.”  
  
He stared at the back of the contract, coloured at the creases, still sturdy after all these years. It looked like paper to him.  
  
“I’ve handled vellum before,” she said. “Only once, though, so I wasn’t sure.” She was watching him. “You know what vellum is?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It’s an old form of parchment. Very old; medieval. By the time of the Great War it was only used rarely. Hardly anyone would have known how to make it.” She shook it slightly, so the parchment made a hollow rattling sort of sound. “You don’t think that unusual? It would have been a very specialist skill. Vellum is made from animal skin, usually cow or deer, sometimes lamb if you’re only writing something small. They stretch it out and scrape it down, over and over again, until they get this sheet they can write on.”  
  
Charon shrugged, and returned to his task, unscrewing the silencer from her pistol. This conversation was making him uneasy, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. It was making his nerves prickle, and a faint nausea rise in his throat. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, and tried to focus on the gun.  
  
“What does it matter what it’s made from?” he asked her, a disgruntled note in his voice. “Why do you keep looking at it?”  
  
She hesitated. “Because it’s interesting. And, well… there’s this shine to the ink, if you hold it a certain way. A red shine, like they mixed the ink with something. Reminds me of blood, a little. Blood on skin. I was just…”  
  
Her voice was drowned out by the rushing in his ears. He dropped the gun, his vision beginning to tunnel, and he gasped for breath against the tightness in his chest. There were black, sour memories curling their tendrils at the edges of his brain, and he couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe. Scrambling on the wood of the roof, he pulled himself to his feet, suddenly desperate to be out in the darkness, away from her and the contract in her hands, the contract, the _skin_.  
  
He stumbled down the stairs, dimly aware of movement behind him. Out through the crops, out over the hill, he fled as if Hell itself were chasing him, fled from the memories that threatened to pour back into his mind. He had spent centuries locking them out. Centuries. He couldn’t let them back in now. He ran, unseeing, frantic, aimless, until his legs burned with fatigue and the farmhouse had been lost in the darkness.  
  
He stopped, his chest heaving, still tight, too tight, but his flight had burned away some of the adrenaline and the fear. He’d regained some sense of thought, enough to notice he had come too far. He’d been lucky not to stumble onto anything willing to kill him. But there was nothing in _this_ darkness he feared. It was the _other_ darkness, the one in his head, where shapeless memories lurked and reached out their hideous tendrils. He could _feel_ them, and dug his fingers into his hair, keening, struggling for breath against the tight, black feeling in his chest.  
  
A crack of a twig made him spin, and Sloan stood with a hand raised, her pip-boy throwing green light on her face.  
  
“Don’t run,” she said, her voice soft, low, and the order took hold.  
  
His breath shook as he exhaled. It felt like safety, to have an order, to not be flailing alone in the dark. A small order, an unnecessary one, but now he _couldn’t_ run and there was a safety in that, to know that someone was in control, even if it was not him. He couldn't even control his breathing: it came in gasps, painful against his ribs. He struggled for breath, for rationality, but it was difficult to think with the fear in him and the shapeless memories casting shadows on the walls of his mind.  
  
He stared at her, his fingers digging into his scalp, his face contorted. There was a wariness to her, somehow both tense and soft, and she moved toward him with an exaggerated slowness.  
  
“It’s okay. You are safe,” she said. “We won’t talk about that again. I’ll put it away, and we won’t talk about it again. You are safe, with me.” She stopped a couple of feet from him, her hand still hovering as if to stop him from running, or to offer reassurance, or both. “We can sit out here, or we can go back… or I can leave you alone, if that’s what you want. Tell me if you want me to go.”  
  
His breathing began to slow, and he shook his head with tight, jerking movements, and lowered himself onto the ground. He was shaking, adrenaline still in his veins, and his hands grasped, fisted, dug into the material of his pants.  
  
She sat beside him, just under two feet away, facing out over the hills. He could see her profile picked out in green light, her face bleak. She had been following him, all this way. Did she think she was going to lose her property? That he was leaving?  
  
No. She knew. That — that thing, those thoughts — she knew, somehow. And she was here. She had come after him.  
  
“I would not have run away,” he said to her. It wasn’t what he had intended to say. He didn’t know what he had intended to say. There was an impulse to speak, but he didn’t want to give voice to the memories. He wanted them to stay shapeless, stay in the black oubliettes of his mind.  “I would have come back. You know I can’t leave.”  
  
“I know.” She closed her eyes, as if it pained her. “But you left your guns behind, and it’s dangerous running hell for leather in the dark. You could have broken your leg or something out here. A deathclaw could have come along and eaten you. And you were...” She picked at the grass in front of her, and grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have guessed it was… tied up in things you don’t want to remember. I’m so sorry. I won’t talk about it again.”  
  
He winced, and looked away. She had made a habit of apologising for things that weren’t her fault. It was something he had scorned her for, at first, in his head if not aloud. He’d thought it insincere, some falsehood of hers to make him less wary of her, perhaps. But this was _heartfelt_ , to a point he found incomprehensible.  
  
They sat for a while, looking up at the stars in silence, until the last vestiges of his panic had seeped away into the night. Perhaps she sensed him relax. She sighed, leaning back to brace herself on one hand.  
  
“It seems so strange. The stars.”  
  
He looked over at her, though he couldn’t make out her expression with her pip-boy throwing its light on the bushes behind them.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“They’re unchanging. They’re the same as they were before. I keep thinking… I mean, the world has changed. It’s changed _so much_. The world _ended_ , and the stars are just the same.”  
  
Charon gave her a long, uneasy look. He hated her like this, when her mind began to slip and she started talking as if she was a being from another world, an alien or an angel, something that had stepped through the fabric of space and time.  
  
He sighed, and pushed himself to his feet.  
  
“Come on. Let’s go back. I’ve kept you out here long enough.” His voice was gruff, and he turned to look around and get his bearings, try to work out where the farmhouse was, where his directionless panic had taken him.  
  
He could hear her getting up behind him, heard her yawn, heard the click from her pip-boy as she checked the map.  
  
“Bit of a walk back from here, champ. I guess we’ll just have a late start tomorrow. Not like we have to be anywhere.”  
  
He hesitated, halfway feeling he should apologise, but unwilling to do what he had always resisted. Another part of him felt he should thank her, for coming out here with him when she needed to rest, for sitting with him in the fucking dark while he let his weaknesses feed on him. He searched for words that didn’t make him feel pathetic, like a slave grovelling his gratitude at her feet.  
  
She drew alongside him, and reached up to pat him on the arm.  
  
“It’s alright,” she said to him. “It’s what we do.”  
  
He looked down at her in surprise.  
  
“You read minds, smoothskin?” he rasped.  
  
She looked up at him with a strange, twisted smile, and patted his arm again. “It’s alright,” she repeated. “It happens. Happens more, I bet, when you’re centuries old.” She set off, and he kept pace, watching her face in the dim green glow of her pip-boy. “All that time for crap to build up in the secret places in your head, waiting for the moment to jump out at you.” She glanced up at him. “It’ll happen to me. _Has_ happened, will happen again. When it does, I go quiet, usually. Quiet and small. I always want to be small, I’m not sure why. Sometimes I crawl under something. Best place for a panic attack or a good, solid dissociative episode used to be the floor of the shower at 2am, but a good shower’s hard to come by in the wasteland.”  
  
Charon was not sure whether he was supposed to laugh at this.  
  
“A good tight hug helps,” she was saying. “Compresses the — I don’t know, it does something to the central nervous system, and helps the hyperventilation. Works for me. Wasn’t sure it would work for you. Didn’t want to touch you and set you off again. Works for me, though. For future reference. But don’t feel obliged. Just make sure nothing comes along and eats me, that’s all I ask.”  
  
“I will protect you,” he rumbled, reciting the old lines almost automatically.  
  
“I know you will, big guy,” she said, and patted his arm again.  
  
Back on the roof, he settled himself back in front of the guns he had dropped in his mad flight. The meditative aspect of the cleaning was a touchstone in times like this. The practicality, that was what he liked. The world could go to hell — further to hell — but a well-maintained gun was something you could rely on. Doing something practical, productive, something that meant safety, something with a quiet rhythm to it… he was glad Sloan had so many guns to clean.  
  
She pulled off her boots and shed her jacket, and snuggled down into her sleeping roll. She was watching him, in the dim light of the bulbs strung around the roof, and he found he did not mind. He was no treat to look at, but there was no cruelty in her stares. Curiosity, maybe. There were worse things.  
  
“How many were there, before me?”  
  
Her voice was deep and soft, sleepy, and the question surprised him. Another time he might have minded it, but not tonight.  
  
“Many.” His mind drifted back over them, the dull and the stupid, the sharp and the cruel, and all of them, all but one, so utterly fucking _hateful_. Who was the first? The early ones, the oldest ones, he didn’t like to go back that far. He could not go back that far. He wondered, sometimes, if perhaps at some point the indoctrination had broken him, if in those years there was no _him_ to think, to remember. Other nights he thinks those early employers are too close to that time when they had brainwashed him, too close to even risk remembering, lest they bring other memories with them. “Many. The early ones… I can’t remember back that far. I do not know how many. I do not know who… who was the first.”  
  
She shifted, lying back, staring up at the stars.  
  
_The stars are unchanging_ , she had said.  
  
“I wonder if you were alive before the War,” she said, her voice thick with sleep. “I wonder if I knew you. I feel sometimes like I knew _so many_ people.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “I don’t think I knew you. I would have remembered someone as tall as you, with hair like that.”  
  
“Strange smoothskin,” he said.  
  
“I used to think that was an insult,” she mumbled, and turned in her sleeping bag to face the darkness. “It doesn’t sound like one any more.”  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really like the idea of the SS meeting someone new and thinking "eh, I'll tell them later" and then forgetting about it entirely, so their friend starts to think they're utterly delusional when they make comments about before the war.


	6. Discomfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you don't sleep, there's not much to do all night but think.

After the guns were clean there was nothing left to do but sit and stare off into space. The lights here killed his night vision, and there was no more loot to sort into piles of what might be sold and what should be kept. He was alone with his thoughts, and tonight that was not a comfortable place to be.   
  
He found himself contemplating his employer. She was rolled up in her sleeping bag, hair spilling out in tangles, one arm thrust out over her head in a manner that did not look comfortable. She was a strange thing. She had always struck him as not as good a person as she pretended to be, and their conversation that afternoon had been revealing. At least she _did_ good things, he supposed; and what were people but a sum of their actions?  
  
It was hard to ascertain her motives. Making someone else happy seemed a false one, to him. Who did something just because another person expected them to do it? …Actually, perhaps that was more common than it should be. He had met plenty of smoothskins who wouldn’t look him in the face for fear of what others might think if they did. And the opposite, travelling with her; there had been plenty of people who seemed unwilling to look at him at first, but had forced a smile because Sloan had, without being in any way explicit, nevertheless made it clear that she expected them to do so.   
  
And why would she do that? He was used to stares, even from other ghouls. He was tall, he was mean, he had a reputation; it might even have carried to the Commonwealth. You could see a part of his _cheekbone_ , for fuck’s sake. Did she think these peasants were cosmopolitan enough not to flinch when they saw him? How often did they see ghouls that weren’t feral? The boy here had been crying when they’d returned with the meat for dinner and it damn sure wasn’t because they’d found some fucking trinket for them. Charon knew. He could read the embarrassment on the mother’s face, the struggle between sympathy for her child’s horror and the debt she knew she owed them.   
  
Sloan’s face always changed at times like that, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how. Like she was wearing a mask, though there was nothing stiff about her expression. It _bothered_ her. Did she think it a personal slight, that someone didn’t want to look at the man in her service? Why did she care? Smoothskins hated ghouls. The fact that she didn’t really seem to — and he felt a twinge at this, remembering her gaze from earlier, her furrowed brow, her serious eyes — was likely rooted in her past in the vault more than anything else. If it had been a sealed one, met with some catastrophe she had to escape, perhaps they’d had no idea ghouls existed at all. No instilled hatreds to perpetuate, and she had grown used to ghouls before learning she was supposed to be repulsed by them. It was still strange to him, though, with her fear of ferals.   
  
He wondered, again, why she had come after him. Not to protect her investment. His service hadn’t cost her a cap, save in bullets. And she had to have known he would return. In that moment when he had dropped her gun and started running, she had come after him, and she would have had to be fast to keep pace with him. Perhaps she had simply acted on instinct? Charon ground his teeth. Her motivations were so difficult to unpick. At least with most of his employers, ascertaining their driving force had been easy: greed, perversion, anger. Some were simply evil — that was the only word he had for them. They were driven by sadism, twisted by some grotesque desire.   
  
Sloan’s motivations confused him merely because they were so different to those who had come before. For all the world it seemed like she had followed him out into the darkness because she _cared_ , actually cared, and that was a possibility Charon found it hard to entertain.  
  
The delusions were the worst part. The rest he could deal with, but the delusions… They would reassert themselves from time to time, usually at night but sometimes at random. There had been names, things she murmured in her sleep; _Nate_ and _Shaun_ in particular. He had not intended to ask about these names, but he had found himself doing so, one morning as they broke camp. Her face had twitched, and she had started off on some strange and unnerving rant about having had a _career_ and a _car_ and a _house in the goddamn suburbs_ and the _American fucking dream_ and did she mention her _fucking career, Alex was going to make her partner, fucking corner office and everything_ and none of it had made any sense to him. Why had he asked? Who cared who Nate was? What did it matter to him?  
  
Except it mattered to the _mistress_ , and somehow, over the past weeks, Charon had started to care about what mattered to the mistress. Which had _never_ happened before and which was _not_ okay with him. He had come near to something like that with the Wanderer, and the Wanderer had thrown him away, and one day Sloan would die and Charon would hand his contract to the next feckless cunt he saw and it would continue on, abusive bastard to abusive bastard, until at last the contract fell to pieces and he could finally, _finally_ , put his shotgun in his mouth.  
  
The mistress was crazy, delusional, and he should _not_ let himself forget that, should not let himself grow too comfortable with her. The trouble was that the rest of the time she seemed so _lucid_. She was smart and cunning and perceptive. She just happened to think she was older than the bombs.  
  
And yet… She looked him in the face without horror or scorn, and she sat with him through a panic attack when other employers would have punished him for that sort of weakness. He did not know what to make of that. He did not know how to respond.   
  
She’d asked him to do the same for her, if she needed it. And he had replied — automatically — that he would protect her, because of course he would, that was _required_ , that was his purpose. And she had — she had _smiled_.   
  
Charon sighed.  
  
She woke late, much later than usual, with a groan that ended in a high-pitched whine.  
  
“It’s not faaaair,” she croaked.  
  
Charon cleared his throat. “What is not fair, mistress?”  
  
“I was hoping it would _never_ come back. I was hoping it was gone for _good_ and all my eggs died or something.” She pushed her shoulders off the ground with a start. “Oh _fuck_ do they even have tampons any more? Oh god. Oh, god.” She was worrying her lip between her teeth, and looking up at him with that contemplative expression that suggested she was about to ask him to do something he would not want to do. “So. Charon. Do you suppose you could do me a _big_ favour and ask the girl here if tampons still exist and, if so, if she has any to spare?”  
  
“This is…” he hesitated, “a woman’s problem?”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “I got my _period_ , you big idiot. I don’t want to _bleed_ all over the place and I didn’t _have_ my period before because I was breastfeeding but then I’ve been out of the vault for six months and I had some spotting but nothing really, and I just _never thought about it_ , okay? Ask the nice ladies if they have anything I can use to, you know, _staunch the bleeding_.”  
  
Charon’s lip curled.  
  
“Don’t make that ‘gross’ face at me. I’m bleeding from my genitals, I’m well aware of how fucked up that is as a concept.” She winced, and collapsed back onto her bedding. “Also _ow_ , sweet mother of fucking god why. Pass me a med-X before you go, will you?”  
  
“A med-X? Mistress —”  
  
“ _I am in pain_.”  
  
The drawn look on her face _did_ seem to suggest a certain degree of agony, so he pulled a med-X syringe from her pack and passed it to her before he went downstairs in search of someone female.  
  
 _Breastfeeding_ , he thought as he looked through the house. One of those names from her dreams must be her child. Perhaps both. Dead in the vault, most like. No wonder she was a little unhinged.   
  
Charon found the mother — possibly beyond menstruating age herself, but she would know what was needed — and he stopped her on her way out into the field.  
  
“Do you need to trade?” she asked, with a wariness in her eyes.  
  
Charon paused. “Yes. The mistress — she requires, uh… She was breastfeeding when she left the vault and she has not… she has need for…”  
  
The woman smirked then, all concern dropping from her face, and she patted him on the arm. Charon almost jumped at the unexpected contact.   
  
“I’ll see to it,” she said, and climbed the stairs.   
  
Charon lingered at the bottom, waiting until he saw the woman descend before starting to head back up. She was still smirking to herself, and she put out an arm to stop him.   
  
“Here, you look after her, won’t you? She has trouble with her monthly. More trouble’n most. Poor thing thought she’d escaped it, I guess, but mother nature ain’t that kind.” She shook her head. “Might not have a chance to have another. Shame. Hard to lose a child. I should know.”  
  
Charon watched her go, not bothering to parse this assorted nonsense, and then went to check on his mistress.  
  
The med-X appeared to be working. She was slumped on top of her sleeping bag, one hand pressing against her midsection, the other arm draped across her eyes.  
  
“Charon?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Everything is terrible.”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
She lifted her arm so she could look up at him. “Med-X is _shit_ ,” she said.  
  
“You can’t have any more. You are a small person, and med-X is not something to play with.”  
  
She gave him a pleading look, and he folded his arms.   
  
“You do not need any more. Addicts are not good employers.”  
  
She huffed a sigh. “ _Fine_. Pass me some jet, then. If I can’t stop the stabbing I at least want to get high.”  
  
“You are joking.”  
  
Her lips twisted into a smile. “Only sort of. I really _would_ like to just… you know, pop something, turn on the radio, tune in, drop out.” She blinked several times, and Charon was surprised to see wetness in her eyes.   
  
“It is very painful?”  
  
She shook her head. “Yeah, but it’s not really that. I just… It hurts, and it sucks being unwell in the Commonwealth. There’s nowhere safe where you can build a pillow fort to suffer quietly in. There’s no one to make you soup or bring you heating pads or watch cartoons with you. I just want a warm bed and a safe home and someone to snuggle with.”  
  
Charon shifted from foot to foot, and scowled. “I am not a snuggler,” he warned her.  
  
She chuckled. “I know. I wasn’t asking. I miss Hancock, that’s all. I haven’t seen him in weeks. Can we head to Goodneighbor? I was going to ages ago but then I got distracted.”  
  
He paused. “You are… asking me? Smoothskin, you are in charge here. You lead, and I follow.”  
  
 “Yeah but we’re in this _together_ , you an’ me.” She pushed herself upright, wincing. “ _Ow_. We’re a team, yeah? I value your input. You don’t want to do something, you ought to tell me. I’ve told you that. Didn’t I say that?”   
  
Charon crouched in front of her, and she looked up at him, startled.  
  
“Smoothskin,” he said, “I don’t _care_ what we do. I follow you, for good or ill. You want to go to Goodneighbor, that’s fine with me. You want to stay here for fifty years and die slowly, that’s fine too.” His mouth twitched up at the corner. “More boring, perhaps.”  
  
She reached out, then, and to his shock she rested her palm, just for a moment, against the side of his neck.  
  
“Aren’t you sweet,” she murmured, and moved her hand to his shoulder to help push herself to her feet. “We should get going,” she said. “Walking helps. Though I was also thinking maybe of throwing up and praying for death.”  
  
They made their goodbyes to the family. The mother pressed something into Sloan’s hand and murmured something into her ear, and they shared a quick embrace. Then they were out in the wasteland again.  
  
“I always think I smell of blood,” Sloan said wrinkling her nose. “I hope we don’t get trailed by something.”  
  
“I will watch our backs.”  
  
“I know you will.” She reached down to massage her abdomen. “You have any nicknames, Charon?”  
  
He ground his teeth. “Nothing repeatable.”   
  
“Would you hate me if I made some up?”  
  
“Potentially.”  
  
She smirked. “I guess I’ll play it by ear, then.”  
  
Her mood lifted, despite the pain that obviously still bothered her. She turned on her radio, and sung quietly along to old songs from long, long before the Great War. The radio announcer, voice crackling, started talking about a vault-dweller who had helped out some Brotherhood of Steel soldiers some time ago, and she grinned.   
  
“Hey, he’s talking about me! I’m famous.”  
  
“Are you sure? Perhaps there is another vault dweller rescuing soldiers.”  
  
She tilted her head at him. “Are you teasing me? You’re teasing me!” She aimed a kick at his ankle.  
  
“Physical violence invalidates our contract,” he reminded her, and grinned at her as she giggled.  
  
He liked her laugh, the light in her eyes. He liked them more than he had expected. She might be crazy, but as employers went, she was not so bad.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been 200 years and there are still bottles of cola in the drinks machines but there's not a single tampon in the whole damn Commonwealth. Or a condom, for that matter. I have to assume they're all using diva cups or something. I just feel like periods should be discussed more in post-apocalyptic fiction. Here I am, doing my part. I gave her a mild case of endometriosis because I have Thoughts about being chronically ill in the wasteland and how it must totally suck.
> 
> Chances are it'll never come up again hahah


	7. Goodneighbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In fairness, who among us hasn't made a significant error of judgement in a bar?

  
Boston was a hell-hole of raiders and super mutants, but she was well aware of where most of them were hiding, sneaking past or taking them down as the moment seemed to dictate. Some areas were comparatively quiet, and it was clear as she waltzed through the empty encampments that she had cleared them out herself. The stress of the ruins wore on both of them even so, with the towering buildings full of snipers’ nests and a potential gun around every dark corner. Still, Charon did not truly take note of the tension in his mistress until they rounded a corner and spotted a neon sign, and all at once it fell away. The change in her was instant. Safety.   
  
The idea of letting one’s guard down _anywhere_ in the wasteland was unthinkable to him. Towns, settlements — nowhere was truly safe. Everywhere there was someone willing to put a knife in your back for a bottle of purified water. And yet his mistress was relaxed, comfortable, and they hadn’t even gotten through the door. It made Charon’s jaw tight with suspense. He was edgy, as if making up for her ease.  
  
If she noticed his demeanour, she attributed it to something else. She led him along the alleyway to where the neon arrow pointed, and waited until he looked down at her. She smiled.   
  
“Welcome to Goodneighbor,” she said, and pushed open the door.  
  
It was a small, bedraggled sort of place, like a kitten that had just managed to escape being drowned. It had, at one point, been a nice part of town, back before the bombs fell, and most of the buildings seemed to be in one piece. The people here were thin, all corners and edges, like many the wasteland spat out. They looked like hunger, like poverty and too many chems. But they, too, were relaxed, leaning against walls or chatting with one another, shopkeepers, or the armed men Charon had to assume were guards. Relaxed, like a hell of raiders and wild dogs wasn’t just outside their door. It was unbelievable.   
  
The walls here were too thin for this sort of complacency, barely patched together from wood and rusting iron. The door was too flimsy, and there were no guards standing outside. Raiders could burst in at any moment. Why was everyone so unconcerned? They were in _danger_ here.   
  
The guards themselves were at least fairly alert, standing about the square in mismatched suits and trilbies, armed with tommy guns. One of them grinned at him as the door shut behind them.  
  
“Brother,” the ghoul said, touching the brim of his hat. “You must be new. Sure I would remember you…”  
  
“Bud, you were so strung out on jet last time I saw you you wouldn’t remember a damn thing,” Sloan said to the man with a cheeky grin.   
  
“If you say so, sister,” he said, and grinned back. “I can’t recall.”  
  
 _Sister._ Joking together, like they were _equals_ , like they were _friends_. He had never seen the mistress with another ghoul, and despite her strong words the day he had met her, he had not expected her to actually behave this way towards them. Or them towards her, for that matter.  
  
He had, once or twice when his mind turned strange places in the middle of the night, wondered if he was an exception. If he was special, somehow. Those thoughts he had always pushed angrily aside, unsure where they had come from and what they implied. Somehow it was stranger still that he was _not_ special, that she looked at any ghoul as if they were no different than she was.  
  
Nor was _she_ special. There was more than one smoothskin in the square chatting with a ghoul, and one of them, a wild-eyed teenager, came up to whisper something in Sloan’s ear. She gave him a tight smile and a quiet _brother_ as she stepped away.  
  
 _Brother_. She was young and looked like a junkie, it was true, but even junkies ranked above ghouls in the unspoken hierarchy of the wasteland. He watched her slink into a doorway, and felt a stirring of something almost affectionate.   
  
_You’re so unused to a smile it turns you into a pathetic sap?_ he scolded himself. _Fucking shameful. Pull it together._  
  
A other few people in the square recognised his employer, calling out their hellos and raising their hands in greeting, their eyes sliding over him, silently weighing him in their eyes, before they gave him smiles of various temperatures and returned to what they had been doing.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Sloan said out of the corner of her mouth. “You’re new, but they’ll warm up to you quickly. Everyone’s welcome here. We’ll go introduce you to the Mayor. If he likes you, everyone will like you.”  
  
“And if he doesn’t like me?”  
  
She waved a hand. “What’s not to like?” She caught his stare, and grinned. “Let me sell some things to Daisy first. Anything you need? Boots, armour, weapons?”  
  
He shook his head, and hovered outside the door to the shop as the mistress bartered with the woman within.   
  
No, not bartered. _Chatted._ Books exchanged hands, the ghoul’s eyes lighting up at the new one slipped across the counter. At one point he was mentioned; Sloan nodded her head in his direction, and Daisy’s gaze drifted slowly over him. Finally his mistress pulled some of her scavenged goods from her pack, and she and Daisy haggled before caps changed hands.   
  
“Daisy’s pre-war,” she told him, hopping down the steps. “It’s good to talk to someone about the old days. Not many people around remember them. I think she gives me a little extra for the old money. Maybe it reminds her of better times.”  
  
 _The old days._ It made him grind his teeth. It would keep slipping his mind, her preoccupation with a time she could never have lived in, her weird ideas about jobs and communities that no longer existed. It would slip his mind, and he would forget that she was crazy. That was foolish, and it would hurt him if he was not careful.   
  
They climbed the steps of the old building in the centre of the square. _The Old State House_ , she told him. Inside, the guards eyed him carefully, but were clearly at ease enough with his employer to let him pass. She exchanged quiet pleasantries with them, and he noticed to his surprise that one was a human. Ghouls and smoothskins in the same damn uniform.   
  
His mistress trotted up the spiral staircase, and threw open a pair of double doors, her arms spread wide.  
  
“Hancock! Light of my life, fire of my loins!”  
  
A figure inside, a flash of bright red, jumped to its feet.  
  
“Welcome home, sister! How’ve ya been?”  
  
He was a ghoul, dressed for some bizarre reason in a revolutionary-era hat and coat, and he caught her up in a hug as she skipped towards him. As he swung her around, she pressed a kiss to his ravaged cheek.   
  
A _kiss._ Charon schooled his face into a blank mask. No smoothskin he had _ever_ seen had been happy even to _touch_ a ghoul. Even the Wanderer had been leery about touching ghouls, despite his attempts to hide it, though in fairness the boy hadn’t liked touching anything much. He was too clean.  
  
Sloan was _not_ clean. She had dirt on her boots and blood on her teeth. Even so, he hadn’t expected to see her _kiss_ a _ghoul._   
  
She was dangling from around this ghoul’s neck, turning in his arms so she could throw out a hand. “Look!” she said, pointing back at Charon. “I _found_ him. Can you believe it? Tough as a motherfucker. Took him off some Gunners, almost by accident.”  
  
“Yeah?” The man eyed him, not with the fear Charon had come to expect, but with a sort of cheerful curiosity. “Big fucker, ain’t he?”  
  
“That’s what _I_ said when I saw him. Six eight if he’s an inch, and carved outta wood. But look, listen…”   
  
She pulled the man away, the crinkle of paper suggesting she was showing him the contract, and Charon started. Did she want to sell him? The smoothskin was probably crazy, but she had been generous enough, and he thought they had been getting along. This ghoul seemed like more trouble than she was. From the chems scattered about the room, it didn’t look like he’d be the most stable employer, and Charon had been the guinea pig for chem traders before. It wasn’t something he was keen to repeat.   
  
He thought back over the time they had been travelling together with a twinge of disappointment. Had he been unsatisfactory? She hadn’t seemed inclined to sell him, had even looked annoyed at the suggestion. He’d thought…   
  
The ghoul was eyeing the document, nodding slowly while his current employer was speaking in a hushed voice.   
  
“Well,” he said at last, “I don’t _like_ it, but it’s better than the alternative, I guess.”  
  
“That’s what I thought,” she said, exhaling in relief. “Thanks for understanding, John.”  
  
“Hey, I trust you, sister.” The ghoul turned back and met his eyes, and gave him a nod. “Sorry about that,” he said. “No one's a slave in Goodneighbor. You understand.”  
  
“Don’t look like that,” Sloan said to him, dangling an arm over the ghoul’s shoulder. “We’re not kicking you out, or anything. And I know you’re not a slave. I just had to, you know… explain the situation. That I wasn’t … uh, that I didn’t…”  
  
“Sunshine here just wanted to make sure I understood she ain’t an evil slaver controlling your every move, that’s all.” The ghoul grinned at him. “I mean, hey, what you two do on your own time is _your_ business, but _everyone_ is free in Goodneighbor.”  
  
Charon opened his mouth to make some sort of vehement denial about whatever he was trying to insinuate by _on your own time_ , but the soft, amused smile on his employer’s face stopped him short.   
  
“I’m going to hang out with Hancock for a while,” she told him. “We have some catching up to do. You can go do whatever you want. Enjoy yourself. Free time until I come find you. There’s the Third Rail; the drinks are okay, the music is better. Or the Memory Den. Go relive the past for a while, if you like. I’ve done it once and it’s the fucking worst, but some people really enjoy it.” She flicked her fingers at him. “Go on.”  
  
He turned almost automatically, and walked out the door.  
  
 _Free time_. “Until I find you” was an open order, the kind that meant he could walk out the door and keep walking, and she might never find him. In some ways it was tempting; a few weeks ago he might actually have considered it, though the thrum of the contract’s need to _protect the employer_ tended to grow more emphatic the greater the distance between them.   
  
“Wait!”   
  
He stopped, and she shot through the door, pressing a bag of caps into his hand.   
  
“For drinks — or whatever. Buy yourself something nice, maybe. Lots of chems in Goodneighbor, if you’re into it, although you’re a big dude so maybe go easy on the psycho, yeah? You could do some real damage.” She patted him on the arm. “Okay, off you go! Have fun.”  
  
Then she was back through the doors again, closing them behind her.   
  
Charon stood in the hall, and stared at the caps in his hand.  
  
“They’ll be a while.”  
  
He looked up, and saw a woman in heavy armour leaning against the wall with a cigarette.   
  
“She hasn’t been back in a month and a half. You know how long that is?” She blew out a stream of smoke, and contemplated her cigarette with a weary air. “The man gets _bored_. He’s a handful when he’s bored. And then after he’s bored, he gets moody. So, they’ll be a while. You can take your time.”  
  
“And you are…?”  
  
“His bodyguard. You?”  
  
Charon’s mouth twitched up at the corner. “ _Her_ bodyguard.”  
  
She gave him a slow nod. “Well, all right then. Guess I’ll see you around.”  
  
The Memory Den caught his attention for a while, but after a strung-out smoothskin standing outside explained it to him he blanched and turned away. ‘ _The fucking worst_ ’ sounded about right. There were few things he was keen on reliving.   
  
Chems could give him a useful edge in a fight, but weren’t something he enjoyed recreationally. Not that he’d had much of an opportunity, of course, but… No. He’d go and check out the bar. A drink. Whiskey, bourbon, or maybe a beer, even. _Drinking_ at a bar, like a _normal person_ , rather than lurking in a corner as a threat made flesh. Yes, he could do that.   
  
He found the Third Rail, the tuxedoed ghoul at the door looking him up and down with narrowed eyes before waving him down the stairs with a warning that the place belonged to Hancock, and he’d best behave himself. Hancock, the ghoul with the red coat and his hands all over Charon’s mistress. Was it money that made her press her lips to his cheek? She didn’t seem the type.  
  
The music wound its way up the stairs. _Live_ music, a rarity if ever there was one, especially in a ghoul town. Vocal cords ravaged by radiation were hardly ever so pleasant… Ah. No wonder. The woman at the microphone was human. And she was a _stunner_. All rich black hair and _legs_.   
  
Charon turned his face resolutely away. That tight dress was too beguiling, and his temporary freedom sang in his head. Too much. It was, of course, impossible. The idea that he _could_ … Could go over there and talk to her, could flirt, could even… But she would never. He wasn’t exactly good looking, even by ghoul standards. She might not have many other humans to choose from here, but still the singer could do better. A lot better.   
  
Charon had always clung to what self-respect he could, and he would not go to bed with a woman who did not want him.   
  
The Mr Handy behind the bar snipped at him, demanding his order. The robot caught his eyes sliding back over to the singer, and satisfaction thrummed in its voice.  
  
“That would be Magnolia. Pride of the Third Rail. Keep your hands to yourself.” It affected a sniff.  
  
Charon’s mouth twitched.   
  
“So are you ordering anything, or what?”  
  
Charon scrutinised the bottles lined up behind the bar. Few places dared leave alcohol out in plain sight like that, and it was a strange indulgence that reminded him of something from long ago, something that would not take shape.  
  
“Bourbon,” he said.   
  
“Bourbon it is.”  
  
It wasn’t good, but it was old, and its age had given it flavour. He found a table away from the bar, his view of the singer deliberately obscured, and allowed his eyes to close. The siren voice slipped around him, the bourbon was heavy on his tongue, and there were no orders.   
  
It was _bliss_.  
  
There were always orders. Night and day he guarded his employers or their property, even when there were no other orders standing. He had never before been given this _free time_ , in which his employer was safe and occupied and there was nothing, _nothing_ he had to be doing. It was _freedom_ and he allowed the sensation to float around him, allowed it to seep into him like the bourbon, like the music. Bliss.  
  
The woman finished her song, and there was a smattering of applause, warm rather than polite. They liked her here.   
  
 A scrape of a chair broke through his small peace, and he opened his eyes to see a couple of guards taking a seat at the next table. A ghoul and a human; strange to see them drinking together, but unlikely to be a threat. He closed his eyes again.   
  
“Good to see the vault-dweller back in town. I like the dame.”  
  
The ghoul guard sniggered, a scratchy sound in his torn throat. “Yeah, I seen you look at her. Heard what you said to her, too. You don’t got a chance. Dame’s fucking Hancock.”  
  
Charon’s eyes snapped open.  
  
In retrospect, he could not have said for sure who had thrown the first punch.   
  
Charon had stood, and _loomed_ , and expected these two men to keep their bitch mouths shut, but the smoothskin took offence to his “interfering”, and the ghoul had started sniggering again and, well… there were no orders. No orders except the prime directive, _protect the contract holder_ , and there was a distant twang somewhere in his mind that suggested, quietly, that reputation might count too, if he _wanted_ it to. And _god_ , it had been so long since he’d had the right to make that sort of decision.  
  
It had all happened so fast. He had bunched his fist, and the guard was _quick_ and there was the sound of something breaking behind the bar and then everything was noise, yelling and crashing and fists flying, the sort of loud angry joy in which resentments were aired and grudges were settled, but, with luck, _probably_ no one would be killed.   
  
Charon’s blood _sang_. He hadn’t been in a proper bar fight in a long, _long_ time. His mere presence had been enough to discourage that sort of thing at the Ninth Circle, and there had never been anything approaching joy in that place until the second he blew Ahzrukhal’s head off his shoulders. _Bar fights_. He loved his shotgun, _trusted_ his shotgun with his life and, more importantly, his employer’s life, but there was something about using his fists that lit a fire in his chest. It was _pure_. The feeling of flesh connecting with flesh, the noise, the shouts, the breaking glass, the reflection of that mix of anger and excitement in the eyes of other men… It was _fun_. He was having _fun_.  
  
There was fire in his chest and blood on his knuckles, and he _grinned._   
  
_“STOP!”_  
  
Charon froze, his blood running cold. The order had taken hold in an instant, his body still before the word had even fully registered in his mind. He flicked his eyes over to the staircase, and saw his mistress standing, aghast, beside the owner of the place he was helping destroy.  
  
Someone broke a chair over his head.   
  
_He_ had stopped, certainly. The rest of the place seemed, at first, happy to carry on. But then Hancock cleared his throat, and it was astonishing, truly astonishing how effective such a small sound could be. The chaos dissolved in moments, a hush falling, the only sounds the tinkle of broken glass and the sound of some liquid dripping onto metal. Then there was movement again, quick and cautious. Chairs and tables were righted, apologies were mumbled, and no small number of people tried to hide behind the bar.  
  
And his mistress was pinching the bridge of her nose.   
  
“Hancock. I am so, so sorry.”  
  
The Mayor looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream, but he patted her on the shoulder just the same. “Hey, Sunshine, no _great_ harm done. Ain’t like they were antiques or anything. I mean, technically I guess some of them were, but at least they weren’t _nice_ antiques, right?” Then the ghoul’s dark eyes caught on the carnage behind the bar, and a muscle twitched in his cheek.   
  
“I swear to god I’ll pay you back for the damage. I’ll bring you every bottle I scavenge from all over the Commonwealth.”  
  
Charon was beginning to panic.   
  
He had — he had not _disobeyed_ , because he couldn’t do that, not really, but he had done something that a deep and terrible part of his mind promised would mean punishment. It was deep and it was _old_ , as old as his contract, as old as his indoctrination, and he was afraid.   
  
More than that. He had _brought shame_ to his mistress. He had _cost_ her, financially and in her standing here, and while he wouldn’t have minded with most of his employers, would have gotten some small pleasure out of seeing them unhappy, she had given him _caps_ and told him to _enjoy himself._ He _liked_ her, damn it, and the very moment she had given him some real freedom he had given her cause to regret it.   
  
He was vaguely aware of Mayor Hancock telling her he’d put it on her tab, making some sort of deal, but Charon was having trouble concentrating on the present. The echoes of a thousand punishments were rising up to taunt him.  
  
He had _cost her_. He had no money — owned nothing that wasn’t in some way hers — and there was no way, no provision in the contract, for him to pay her back. Other employers had extracted their debts with pain, one way or another. He had known this woman for little more than a month and already he knew she was steel and acid when she was angry. And she was _inventive_. So many employers had had to be, when devising his punishments. He had not crossed her before, had no idea what to expect from her. He was afraid.  
  
She beckoned to him, and he followed her up the stairs.  
  
“Sorry, Ham,” she said to the bouncer, or doorman, or whoever he was.   
  
The man just shrugged. Charon tried to exchange an apologetic look with him, and failed. From the studied, blank look on the ghoul’s face Charon was beginning to suspect the Third Rail did not have many such disruptions. The name of the owner must be, by and large, enough to keep the peace. A threat, like Charon himself leaning against the wall at the Ninth Circle.  
  
He followed Sloan out into the sunlight, and across the square into the neighbouring hotel. The humans there were careful not to make eye contact. Word must have spread fast. Or perhaps it was the look on his employer’s face. He could tell from the set of her shoulders as they climbed the stars that she was _not_ happy.  
  
She opened the door at the end of the hall, and waited for him to enter. She followed him in, the door of her hotel room closing behind her, and she crossed her arms over her chest.  
  
“Did I not say to avoid the psycho? You’re a big guy, I said. You could cause some damage, I said.”  
  
“I didn’t — I —” He cringed, and despite his hatred of showing weakness he found himself sinking to his knees. “No psycho, mistress. I didn’t take anything. Bourbon, only bourbon.”  
  
She sighed, and he didn’t look at her face.  
  
“Who started the fight?”  
  
Charon swallowed.  
  
“I did, mistress.”  
  
“Why? _Hancock’s bar_. You knew he was the Mayor. You knew he was my friend. We’re here five minutes and you _trash his bar_. Why?”  
  
Charon’s hands clenched spasmodically. “Your… your reputation. A man in there…”  
  
“A man in there what?”   
  
“H-he said… he said you were a ghoul-fucker.”  
  
“He _what?_ ”  
  
He risked a glance at her, and saw her blinking her large hazel eyes in absolute astonishment.   
  
Charon grimaced.   
  
“They suggested you and Mayor Hancock were… having relations.”  
  
She stared at him for a long moment, and then let out a cackle that startled him to his feet. The look on his face set her off further and she all but doubled over, shaking with laughter.  
  
“That’s all they said?” she said, gasping for breath. “That’s _all?_ That I was fucking Hancock?”  
  
“Mistress —”  
  
“But I _am_ fucking Hancock!” She collapsed into laughter again, fighting against it, until at last it ebbed away. She leant back against the door, and gave him a grin. “That’s all? That’s really all it was?”  
  
Charon’s mouth worked as he sought for words.   
  
“I… wished to defend your reputation. Other… other smoothskins will think less of you for it.”  
  
“Oh, no they won’t, you over-sized worrier.” She flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture. “And anyway who cares if they did? The ones who matter don’t mind. _Everyone_ likes Hancock. It’s just those stuck up bigots over in the _great green jewel of the Commonwealth._ ” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about them. They just need someone to feel superior to.”   
  
“But…”  
  
She gave him a strange sort of smile. “Look. They have small, pathetic lives in their sad little huts in a baseball stadium. They live their whole lives behind those walls, imprisoning themselves to give them some sense of safety, pretending to themselves it is something worth having. Charon, why would I care what they think?”  
  
Charon was finding this difficult to parse.   
  
“You’re a vault-dweller,” he said at last. “You do not understand how they think out here. You do not understand how you _lower_ yourself.”  
  
“I do _not_ —” She broke off, and spat out a series of curses. “I do _not_ ‘lower myself’,” she said, jabbing a finger towards the ground. Her eyes flashed. “He’s the goddamn Mayor! He built this town, on passion and love and honest-to-god _hope_. I do not _lower_ myself, Charon, don’t — I don’t like it when you say that.”   
  
He saw her catch the order before it left her lips, catch and rephrase it even in her anger, and he hated that, hated the strange twinge he felt in his chest. He looked away, and his mouth worked as he grasped at words to express his meaning.   
  
“It’s not about what he’s _done_ , not to them. Smoothskins don’t find ghouls… attractive. They think less of us because of what we look like, because of what we can become. We’re one breath away from ferals to them, and they’ll think less of _you_ because you treat us like we’re normal. They’ll think there’s something _wrong_ with you.”  
  
He looked back at her, and saw amusement sparkling in her eyes. _Amusement_. What was funny?  
  
“This is _Hancock_ , Charon,” she said, and her mouth stretched into a lop-sided grin. “Come on now! I mean they talk big, but I swear to god, half of Diamond City would climb that man like a tree, ghoul or not.” She studied him a moment, grin subsiding, her head tilted to one side. “Is that… Does that bother _you?_ That we’re not…” she made a vague gesture, “compatible?” When he hesitated, she gave him a warm smile. “You have to watch him _move_ sometime, champ. There’s more to attraction than skin. Watch him _move_. The way he carries himself. That _swagger_ , good _lord_.” She hesitated. “Though… I’m sure some ghouls must find the physical changes… upsetting. Most, probably.” Her smile grew sad, perhaps a little sheepish. “I know I would.”  
  
Charon’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “We are _repulsive._ ”  
  
 _That_ caught her attention, and not in a way he had intended. She jolted, and for half a breath her face contorted into an expression of utter, utter anguish before she schooled it into something else, and turned away.   
  
Charon stared at her, and said nothing. He had hurt her in some way, had upset her, out of that strange, impulsive desire to protect her reputation. First in the bar, now here. It was like she didn’t _see_ him, didn’t see ghouls, and he found that so goddamn _frustrating_. Charon had vague, distant memories of a time he had stared in every mirror he found, willing himself to become desensitised to the devastation of his own face. It had never fully caught. Sometimes there were still moments when, unaware, he’d catch sight of his reflection in a car window or a sheet of metal and feel a twinge of horror before he realised what he was looking at.   
  
 He hated the idea that his employer was putting herself in this position, as if it tainted her somehow. Fucking a ghoul might not turn her into one, but it may as well in the eyes of other humans. She had spent too much time in this place. It had warped her perspective. Ghouls were rotting, twisted, living corpses, and she _knew_ that. She had known that from her second day out of the vault. How could she be so terrified of the ferals and fall into bed with a ghoul? It made no sense.   
  
There _was_ something wrong with her.   
  
She turned back to him, subdued, and she gave him a sad, sad smile, and shrugged.   
  
“Anyway, it’s done now,” she said. “Magnolia wants some time off in a few weeks, they need someone to replace her, and I am not a _total_ disaster in the singing department, so… there’s that. Tomorrow we’re heading to Diamond City to find a slinky red number so I can look the part.”  
  
“You… must work to pay off my debt?”  
  
She sighed, and quirked a smile. “Well, since I’m your boss, and all that you have is mine, apparently it’s _my_ debt. Come on, you over-sized ass. You can help me choose a dress.”  
  
Guilt was an emotion with which Charon was, in some ways, very familiar. Torture, murder, brutality… He had been ordered to do it all, and enjoyed little to none of it. But never before had he felt guilty for disappointing an employer.   
  
“I cannot go to Diamond City.”  
  
“Well, _I_ am going to Diamond City, and I would like you to come with me.”  
  
This was not an order. It did not dig metal teeth into his nerves. It was a _request_. A statement. She would _like_ him to go with her.   
  
“Then,” he hesitated, “I will come with you.”  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay Goodneighbor! More Hancock soon, I promise. Actually, hang on.... *counting* OK so maybe not so soon. But there is lots of Hancock ahead! So much that you'll be sick of him.


	8. Punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon's having a tough couple of days. 
> 
> (*Diamond City guard voice* "I didn't see a GHOUL following you around, did I? Didn't think so.")

He stayed in the room she had rented that night — another debt he had no way of repaying — while she, presumably, went to sleep with the Mayor. At least there was no question why Hancock would accept her back into his bed after the man in her service had helped destroy his bar. Most humans would _never_ touch a ghoul, and he clearly knew a good thing when he had it. Charon did not blame him.  
  
This settlement was less dangerous than anywhere else they had been, and despite the thinness of the walls, he felt as if he was able to sleep here. There were guards enough to alert him, to wake him, in case something should happen. But sleep did not come, and he spent the night staring at the ceiling, listening for footsteps in the hall.  
  
They left at dawn the next day, dread like a rock on Charon’s chest. Ghouls were not welcome at Diamond City, _she_ had told him so, yet she was leading him there for a simple errand. Was this the punishment? Would she stand by and watch as the people of the city took out their rage and their hate and their fear on him?  
  
_Mobs._ There had been mobs before. He did not like to think about the mobs.  
  
The road to Diamond City was a clear and open one, once they had passed a camp of super mutants that had apparently been cleared some time before. His employer seemed in good spirits. _She must have slept well_ , Charon thought, and hated himself a little. It was not his business with whom the employer chose to spend her time, or with whom she chose to share her bed.  
  
“Careful,” she said. They had reached a small square, a park in the centre of the city. She was crouched slightly, her hand raised to still him, her eyes flitting around the common.  
  
Charon followed her gaze, but could see nothing. Apparently, nor could she, for she nodded and straightened a little.  
  
“Quick and quiet,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I prefer going this way, it’s faster, but everyone else loses their _shit_ when I try.” She shot him a grin over her shoulder, darting along the ground on silent feet. “I’d been through here about three times before I found out why. If you see anything big move before we get to the other side, you’re under orders to fucking _book it_.”  
  
He spotted it only as they left the park behind: an immense super mutant, distorted beyond even normal mutations. It looked like it had a _tentacle_.  
  
“This is Swan’s Pond?” She had mentioned it, the day they met.  
  
Sloan hovered by his side, looking back at the mutant, and nodded.  
  
“I tried to take pot-shots at it once,” she said. “It nearly brained me with a rock. It _did_ brain MacCready, and thank god I had the stimpaks and the cover to get us both out of that one.” She gave a little shrug. “I’ll get it one day. I’m sure there’s something _amazing_ in that park.”  
  
Charon snorted, distracted momentarily from his dread. “Probably nothing but trash.”  
  
“Worth checking, though.”  
  
“ _I_ will check,” he told her. “The radiation there is too high. I could feel it as we passed.”  
  
She gave him that smile he was having difficulty decoding.  
  
“If you like,” she replied. “Come on. Diamond City awaits. I’m going to see how much booze I can talk the Bobrovs out of.”  
  
The dread returned.  
  
The Diamond City guards were nothing like the ones in Goodneighbor. The ones in Goodneighbor called themselves the _Neighbourhood Watch_ , he had discovered, and he found he liked them better for it. It was their home and the people were their community, and though they were untrustworthy braggarts who gossiped about his mistress — though they expected, by and large, the residents to sort out their own shit — they were still, in their way, fiercely protective of Goodneighbor. _These_ guards… he was not as sure about these guards. They were heavily armoured, serious, and entirely human, and they looked at him with open disgust. These guards did not call people _brother_. Particularly not ghouls.  
  
His mistress ignored them, though he thought that perhaps her smile grew tight.  
  
The guard at the door seemed unwilling to let them pass, but she stared at him with her tight smile and a distant look in her eyes, and eventually he sighed and nodded them through.  
  
“They know me here,” she told him, leading him up the stairs. “I am not sure, sometimes, whether most of them _like_ me, but they know me. They know what I was looking for and where I’ve come from, so I think they feel a certain… I don’t know. Like I’m their eccentric aunt who visits once a month and brings them strange gifts. _You_ might be a bit _too_ strange for them, though. It takes them a bit of a run-up to get used to things that are outside their comfort zone. If they say anything…” She sighed. “I don’t know. Just try to look menacing, I guess.” She shot him a look. “Not that you should have too much trouble with that.”  
  
Charon let this settle over him.  
  
“You are not —” he cut himself off.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Never mind.”  
  
His mistress’s hand closed around his wrist, and she pulled him quickly through the town. There were glances, and a few raised voices, but she ignored them. Charon looked over his shoulder as she dragged him on, feeling a sour dread. There were too many eyes on him, and all of them were angry. From somewhere in the marketplace, he heard a child start to cry.  
  
The mistress stopped in front of a red door, releasing his wrist to dig through her pockets for her key. She unlocked the door, and then they were through, and it clicked shut behind them and the mob had not descended.  
  
Something was not right.  
  
“Mistress,” he said, turning to watch her as she pottered about what was presumably her home. There was a bed in an alcove to the right of the door, a huge thing with a pile of different coloured blankets. It overflowed with cushions, all mismatched, and a row of empty nuka cola bottles sat behind it, each with a candle wedged into the neck. There was a safe beside her bed, serving as a table, with a lamp and a book on top and a small soldier carved from wood.  
  
She let herself fall back onto her pile of blankets with a _huff_ of relaxation.  
  
“Yes, Charon? What is it?”  
  
“You… you have not…” He gathered himself. “I know it is not my place to ask questions, but you wished me to speak freely. So I will. I do not want to continue to wonder when you will punish me for causing the bar fight. Please. Do it and be done with it.”  
  
She looked up at him as if she’d been burnt, eyes wide with shock, colour rising to her face.  
  
“Pun—” She stopped, and swore. “God. _No_.”  
  
“I disappointed you.”  
  
“Yeah, a little,” she said, and did not look at him then, rising to busy herself with a chest of drawers. “But it’s not like you were the only one fighting.”  
  
“But I cannot repay this debt.”  
  
“No. You are my responsibility. The debt is mine.”  
  
“That… no.”  
  
“I hold the contract. Everything of yours is mine. _The debt_ is mine. Now,” she said, lifting something from the drawer, “which of these dresses do you think is more beguiling?”  
  
The change of subject disoriented him. She was holding two dresses, neither of which looked large enough to fit her, both of which sparkled in an altogether distracting way.  
  
He met her eyes, feeling untethered, and she read something on his face that made her sigh and drop the dresses onto the bed.  
  
“Oh, god,” she said, and walked across the room to wrap her arms around his waist.  
  
He stiffened.  
  
“My poor little twisted broken killing machine,” she mumbled against his armour. “Of course I’m not going to punish you, Charon. You had a fight in a bar. It wasn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, but I mean, no one _died_. Some chairs and bottles got broken. It’s not,” she hummed a laugh to herself, “the end of the world.”  
  
He stared down at her. Her arms around his waist were setting off alarms in his head and he couldn’t work out what she was saying.  
  
“I-I… I was…”  
  
“Maybe I _should_ be angry, but you know how damn hard it is to be mad at you? This is the first thing you’ve done since I met you that feels like it was an actual _choice_ you made rather than some inbuilt duty or something. I can’t say ‘Hey Charon, go do whatever you want’ and then punish you for what you decide on. Besides, you looked like you were really enjoying yourself.”  
  
He let out a shaky breath.  
  
“It… it was _fun_.”  
  
“Well, good.”  
  
“N-no, not good, mistress. No. I should not have _fun_ , I should not…”  
  
“Charon, I’m not going to punish you for having a bit of fun. Even if it _did_ cost me more than I expected. You’re my guy. You keep me safe. ”  
  
“I k-kept them all safe,” he said, mostly to himself. He kept them all safe, because that was what the contract demanded of him. They had still punished him. He had sometimes even deserved it.  
  
She was _perceptive_ , and that was hard for him to deal with. He was used to cruel and he was used to thoughtless, but he was not used to perceptive. He didn’t know what to do with an employer who could read him as well as she could, and it was worse than disarming. With any other employer it would have been terrifying. He liked her, despite knowing that he shouldn’t, despite her delusions and the power she held over him. He liked her and it was somehow _worse_ to know she wasn’t angry, because how could he rely on her to _stop_ him?  
  
The bar fight _had_ been his choice, his actions, his _decision_ , and it had felt _so good_. It had felt… it had felt _free_. She saw that. She knew that without having to be told, so why didn’t she know that it had been _wrong_? A muscle twitched in his arm, and he took a deep, shaking breath. It had been wrong, that choice, it was… he had been free… he had… that _bliss_ , that _joy_ , and it had been so _wrong_.  
  
“I… was free,” he stuttered. “There were no orders. I was free, and it… Mistress… It was wrong. I felt free but it was wrong, I did the wrong thing. I should—” His breath caught in his throat. “I shouldn’t be free.” An old thought, it was an old thought from a time he couldn’t remember. _I shouldn’t be free_. He looked down at her, and she seemed so small pressed against his chest, and that, that was wrong, too. She was touching him, holding him, that was wrong. “Why are you _hugging_ me?”  
  
She went stiff, and stepped back, withdrawing slowly as if afraid of startling him.  
  
She — she was perceptive, and she saw more than he expected, and that did not feel right. It did not feel _familiar_. It was not just that she saw; she was the only person who had ever bothered to look. He was used to being ignored, forgotten, told to sit in the corner and shut up because his purpose was to defend and to kill, and the rest of the time he was in the way, a hindrance. He was not used to being seen. And he was definitely, definitely not used to being hugged. It unnerved him.  
  
And she saw that, too.  
  
“I apologise,” she said, and she gave him a wan smile. “I should have asked, before I... I mean, I have authority over you, and I forget that too often. You are not a snuggler. I should have asked.” She turned back to her bed, and her voice was softer, as if she was speaking to herself. “You have so few freedoms. I must make them as large as I can.”

 

 


	9. Dresses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon finds himself in a whole new kind of trouble.

“He didn’t _ask_ me to pay for the damage, you great idiot,” she said from behind the curtain. “I _offered_. I said, look, he’s my responsibility, he doesn’t _own_ anything, you gotta give me a figure here. He was like, ‘Oh, Sunshine, don’t worry about it! We’ll put it on your tab!’ Like I’m _ever_ going to pay that thing off. Whitechapel Charlie keeps telling me my money’s no good there.” She poked her head around the curtain. “And before you start, _caps_ , not old world money.”  
  
She’d gone out earlier looking for a friend of hers, the Valentine she had mentioned once or twice, but had returned when she was unable to find him. Now she was trying on her sparkling dresses, and Charon, standing in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, was to give his honest opinion on which was the better choice. As if he knew anything about dresses.   
  
He sighed.  
  
“But… the singing…”  
  
“I wanted to pay him back, _he_ wants to hear me sing again. And probably to see me wiggle into a tight dress, let’s be honest. Plus, it shows the rest of the Commonwealth he doesn’t take shit, and that’s _important_. He stabbed a guy the minute I stepped through the door, did I tell you that? This guy was trying to shake me down for money, and Hancock doesn’t allow that sort of thing, not if you’re new. He thinks it makes the place look bad. The guy talked back, so… He had to make a point. Can’t show weakness in the Commonwealth, not if you have a position of power you intend on keeping. This way we both keep our honour, and it doesn’t cost me all the caps I own. Now,” she pushed aside the curtain and stepped forward into the light, “what do you think?”   
  
Charon, in fact, did _not_ think. Something in his mind must have shut down, because he really had _no idea_ his employer had hips like _that_ , or a waist that nipped in quite like _that_ and holy Christ the way the sleeves hung off her shoulders highlighted her collarbones in a way that he found _very_ confusing. Half-starved wastelanders had plenty of prominent bones and none of them looked like _she_ did in that dress.   
  
“You all right in there, big guy?” Her smile was shy, unsure, and she broke his gaze to look down over the shimmering silver material. “I’m not sure about it — I mean I’ve always been such a pear shape, I like my waist but I mean these dresses always make my hips look _huge_ but there aren’t really many others around nowadays so there’s not a lot of options. I always used to favour maxi skirts with a tight bodice, but I guess that’s a bit more Officer’s Mess than singing in an underground nightclub, anyway.”  
  
Charon found his voice, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  
  
“You have _hips_ ,” he said.   
  
“Yeah, I know… I usually try to minimise them, but you can’t hide much in a dress this tight." She looked a little sheepish. "Like I say, not really my choice of cut, but nothing I can really do about that. Whatserface at the clothing store isn’t exactly a seamstress.” Her smile wavered. “So, what do you think?” She turned a circle to show him front and back. “How do I look?”  
  
“You look…” He cleared his throat. “Uh…”  
  
“Not the grey one, then?” She looked up at the ceiling, chewing her lip. “Right, not the grey one. I mean, I like the shoulders, but it’s not really my colour. Washes me out a little. Hold on, I’ll try on the other one.”  
  
She disappeared back into her bedroom alcove, and suddenly her silhouette against the curtain took on a whole new fascination for him.   
  
_Why_ had he never noticed her _figure_ before? There was a fullness to her hips that made him feel like someone had just hit him upside the head with an iron bar. For a vault-dweller she was no weakling, he knew, but it was one thing to know it and another to see it in the line of the muscles in her legs, the curve of her triceps. She was just as strong as someone raised in the wastes, yet where they were rangy and thin, there was a svelte sleekness to her, a roundness to her long limbs, that must be borne of a lifetime of good food and the safety of the vault.   
  
And her _skin, god,_ he’d stared at her wrist in that bunker under the church and wondered at the smoothness of her skin. He had seen precious little of it before, and now there seemed to be _so much_ of it, pale and flawless. Porcelain. He’d heard the phrase before, _porcelain skin_ , and never understood it until now.  
  
It was unsettling. Wrapped up in armour and combat pants and that dark leather jacket, she had just been his employer. Tough, agile, with beauty in her face, true, but it was a distant sort of beauty. Cool, almost refined; an aesthetic he admired in his head but nowhere else. He rarely admired her at all, in fact. Her role of _employer_ was too powerful, too prominent in his mind. She had been _interesting,_ but never _attractive_. He had never looked at her like that before, never picked out the sway of her hips as she walked or the pale curve of her throat. And now…  
  
Now he was having _thoughts_.  
  
This was going to be _bad._  
  
“Okay, are you ready? And this time you have to really tell me what you think, okay? Wait, that’s not an order. Or… maybe it _is_ an order! Ha!”   
  
She threw the curtain aside, and the red dress, somehow, was _better_.  
  
It _clung_ to her. The thin straps looked as if they might slip from her shoulders at any moment ( _stop it, Charon, stop it, bad thoughts_ ) and the red was _perfect_ against the dark chocolate of her hair.  
  
“Well?” She did a twirl, and sweet merciful god it dipped so low across her back. “What do you think? Full sentences!”  
  
“You look _incredible_ ,” he growled, and she laughed and clapped her hands, but then she looked up at his face and there was no way she could not have seen the hunger in his eyes, and he turned his face away so he wouldn’t have to see her smile fade.  
  
“The red one, then?” she asked him, her voice thrumming with pleasure, for all the world like he hadn’t basically threatened to devour her.  
  
“The red one,” he agreed. He kept his gaze on the floor.  
  
“You’re allowed to… to think I’m pretty, you know,” she said, and he heard the swish of the curtain, and knew it was safe to turn back.  
  
“ _Pretty_ ,” he spat. His eyes lingered on her curved silhouette.  
  
“People do. Some of them, I mean. It’s allowed.”  
  
He suspected she was making fun of him.  
  
“Your ghoul won’t mind if I think you _pretty_?”  
  
“Idiot,” she chuckled. The shadow-Sloan projected onto the curtain reached down for her clothing. “ _You_ are my ghoul. Got the contract to prove it.”  
  
He bit the inside of his cheek, and snarled silently to himself.  
  
“You know what I mean.”   
  
“Hancock, I mean, that man loves with _all_ of himself. He loves _hard_. But he’s not really the jealous type. He figures there’s hate enough to go around in this world, there should be love enough to go around too. He doesn’t get upset about where people’s eyes go. It only bothers _him_ if it bothers _me_.” She pulled her shirt down over her head, and slid her pip-boy onto her arm. “I mean, he knows I’m always going to love Nate. He knows how much I miss him. But that’s okay, because he knows I love him too. I mean, hell, even back in the day, Nate had this thing with one of the guy’s in his unit, Sam, and what was I going to say to that? They went to hell and back together. He loved the guy. And I loved that he loved him. And now, I mean… Life’s too short in the wasteland. You feel me, big guy?”  
  
She pushed the curtain aside.  
  
“Who is Nate?” He had heard the name enough times over their weeks together. It was time he had an answer.   
  
“Nate was my husband.” He noted her measured use of the past tense. She sat upon the bed, smoothing out the red dress, and began to fold it. “I met him in the army. He was career, infantry, front-lines. Never thought he’d make it back, but he did, and you know how it goes, you meet him at the airport, he gets down on one knee with a ring he’s been carrying through battle-zones… Never thought I’d get married, but _Christ_ it was good to see him. He made my world go round.” She sighed, and slipped the dress into her pack. “We can go see him, if you want. One day. I should… I should really give him back my ring. He should have a part of me with him, I think.”  
  
“Why did you leave, if you still love him?”  
  
“Oh — no, he’s dead. He was shot.”  
  
There was no way a vault would leave a dead body lying around, and they had nowhere to bury them.The corpses, she’d spoken of them before, corpses, plural… Had they all killed one another, down there?  What exactly was she planning on taking him to see?   
  
“He is buried in the wasteland? Outside the vault?”   
  
Her hand stilled on the latches of her pack.  
  
“Crap. That’d be smart, wouldn’t it? I mean I should really… I should really bury him. He probably wouldn’t want to be stuck down there in the cold. I could bury him by the house.” She snorted. “Codsworth will lose his shit.” She looked over at him. “You’ll help me with this? I can’t carry him by myself.”   
  
Charon eyed her uneasily. She was veering into territory where her delusions lived, her talk of armies and cities, things she could never have seen. He did not like her when she was like this. But what could she say? She had asked his help in moving the body of her husband. At least he would find out whether the man had been real.  
  
“I will do as you command,” Charon said.  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Squidward voice* OH NO SHE'S HOT
> 
> So there I am rooting through stuff in Sanctuary Hills and I find this old red dress and I figure it's going to be one of those summer dresses but I try it on and DANG, GIRL. Got some HIPS. The fuck you been hiding those?!


	10. Valentine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloan is hyperactive when she's had a few drinks.

He explored her house while she was out. _Just a few drinks with the girls_ , she had said. He had been given the run of the place, allowed to explore but cautioned — not _ordered,_ yet cautioned — that it would be best if he stayed inside.   
  
The bathroom was impressive. The water in the pipes was clean, thanks to some sort of filtration and purification system. There was even a _shower_. The only insufficiency was in the curtains that stretched across to separate the bathroom area from the rest of the house. Walls would be preferable. Doors. He did not want to wander through and discover her in a state of undress.  
  
Beyond the bathroom lay a workshop, scattered with half-assembled weapons and scraps of armour, favoured pieces set up on the walls. Trunks, lock-boxes, even a chem station. Stairs trailed up one side of the house, up to a desk, a collection of magazines and knick-knacks, then further, to a set of bunk beds and a ladder leading onto the roof. Charon smirked to himself; the bunk beds were presumably for the friends she had said she dragged along with her from time to time, but they were all of them far too short for him. Happily, sleeping was not an issue.  
  
At the base of the stairs was her kitchen, complete with bits and pieces she or whoever owned the place before her must have scavenged from an old diner: red seats, a formica table, and an old juke box in what appeared to be working condition, as well as the usual fridge, sink, stove, counter top. And then there were the _shelves_. Most of them had only one or two pieces on them, arranged according to a system he could not decipher. A gilded grasshopper. A locket. A human skull. And, now, the safebox.  
  
She had pulled it out from a locker, blowing dust off the top as she brought it through to the living room. It was heavy, with a complicated looking lock, and she had set it on the table and pulled the contract from her inside pocket.  
  
“It’s too breakable,” she said, waving the contract in the air, “but I don’t know what to do with it aside from locking it away. I thought about putting it in the safe, but if I died, you’d have a hard time getting it out. So,” she held up a key, “this is for you. If I die, you can come back here and get your contract. I don’t know what you’ll do about the guards… We could put it in Goodneighbor, but I don’t own property there, and I wouldn’t feel safe just having it sitting around in the Old State House or the Rexford where anyone could walk in and nick off with it. So, here will have to do for now, until we think of someplace better.” She had unlocked the box, and laid the contract inside with a sort of reverence. “If you have the option, if there’s any way you can, you know, weight the dice in your favour in this, give it to Nick. Nick doesn’t age like humans. He’s a good man. A better person than me. He could be a good employer for a few centuries.”  
  
Now the key was settled in a pocket inside his armour. It was a good idea; he was growing used to her now, could stand to be around her for the foreseeable future at least. There were twinges of something in the back of his mind that made him uneasy, like the image of her in a dress and the thoughtful way she looked at him over the campfire, and her pre-war delusions continued to bother him, but other than that… They were comfortable. She was a good employer. And this, this was a good idea.   
  
Charon was in the midst of his perusal of the strange items on her shelves when there was a knock on the door, and he paused. He moved through her home and stared at the red-painted metal, wondering whether it was in any way expected that he should open the door. Probably _not,_ right? That could cause trouble…  
  
There was a _click_ of a key in the lock, and the door opened. Ah, just the mistress, then. He was about to return to his examination of the shelves, but then he heard the flick of a lighter and turned back to see a figure in a long coat and hat slipping through the door.  
  
The figure lit his cigarette, and looked up at Charon with an expression of surprise.   
  
The snarl died on Charon’s lips. His mouth fell open. The man’s skin was _grey_ , and missing in great chunks along his neck and jaw, showing robotic parts that were nothing like he had ever seen before. The hand that held the cigarette wasn’t even a _hand_ ; the grey skin covering the rest of the body was missing, revealing a bone-like structure made from metal.  
  
Light flared in the robot’s golden eyes.  
  
“You’re not much of a looker yourself,” he said.   
  
Charon gaped at him.   
  
The robot flicked ash from the end of his cigarette with his skeletal fingers.   
  
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to know where the dame went, would ya? She stopped into my office earlier, but I wasn’t in. Thought she might be back by now. Was going to leave a note, but I guess you can do that for me.” He offered his left hand, the one with the skin still on it. “Nick Valentine. And you are…?”  
  
Charon coughed, and shook his hand. It didn’t escape him that the robot had offered the wrong hand intentionally. To spare him some sort of discomfort, perhaps. He must be used to that sort of thing.   
  
“Charon. Sloan is my employer.”  
  
“Your _employer_ , huh? And what’s our little popsicle employ you for?”   
  
Charon ground his teeth. “You should ask her.” _Popsicle?_  
  
Valentine nodded slowly. “All right. Well, tell her I stopped by.”  
  
As he turned to the door, it clicked and jolted open under an impatient boot, and Sloan stepped through and kicked it shut behind her. When she noticed her visitor, her face lit up and she threw her arms around his neck.  
  
“Nicky!”  
  
The robot chuckled. “Hey there, dollface. Nice to see you too.”  
  
“It’s been _forever_ ,” she said, squeezing him even tighter. “I found another tape for you!” She let him go and pranced over to dig through her pack. “There are still so many left to track down, but some of the stations have evidence logs. Like in and out, what was sent where. You know? Like they’ve traded these things all over the fucking Commonwealth, I swear to God they’ve _foreseen_ this and two hundred years ago they conspired to _fuck me_ by sending them to as many different places as possible.” She found the thing, grinning to herself and tossing it to her visitor.  
  
“I appreciate you doing this for me,” he said, examining the tape.   
  
“It’s my pleasure, Nick, you know that. Number in that one is eight.” She tapped the holotape in his hand. “Oh! And you met Charon!” She flashed a smile at the both of them.  
  
“I did. He said you were his employer. You find yourself another MacCready, huh, doll?”  
  
“ _That_ ,” she said, “is a _whole thing_. I need your advice on that. But first,” she turned to Charon. “You know those things I showed you near that old dump site?”  
  
“Those robot things.”  
  
“Yeah. Synths, they’re called. Synthetic humans. See, Valentine here is kind of like them, only different. Like a missing link between those things and the next step up. Except Valentine has a mind of his own.”  
  
“Not _exactly_ my own,” the robot — _synth_ — said with a lop-sided smile.   
  
She rolled her eyes. “When they made Nick they downloaded someone’s brain into him, so he has all these memories from before the war. They’re his but they’re not his, you get it? Anyway, Nick helped me out when I first got here.” She looked over at the synth with a warm smile. “I owe him _big_. Some others here, too, which is why I still come back to Diamond City, even though they don’t like ghouls. Nicky here is my hero.”  
  
“She says that, but the part she’s leaving out is that the first time we met, she’d come to spring me from a very sticky situation involving a lot of men with guns.” Valentine shifted beside her, and relit his cigarette. “Now that you mention it, how’d you manage to get him in here?”  
  
She shrugged. “I just walked real fast and hoped for the best.”  
  
“Huh. Shame that sort of thing doesn’t work more often. I suppose you had a plan in place in the event that they’d tried to kick him out?”  
  
She winced. “Um. Get shot, probably.”  
  
He patted her on the shoulder. “You really gotta work on your plans, doll. I have to ask, though — why’d you bring him here?” He shot Charon a look. “No offence intended, fella. For what it’s worth, they hate synths around here more than they hate ghouls. I was sort of grandfathered in.” He hesitated. “Not that that did much good for the ghouls that used to live here. What I’m trying to say is, maybe next time you should wait outside the walls.”  
  
Charon folded his arms across his chest and nodded at Sloan. “I follow her. For good or ill.”  
  
For a synthetic person, he did a good job of looking alarmed.   
  
“He’s — he has a contract — Can I borrow your key, Charon? Thank you — See, this was what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m his employer, but I don’t actually pay him or anything.” She opened the lockbox, and pulled out the aged piece of vellum. “There’s this contract — no touching, look with your eyes — I found it on these dead Gunners, and now it’s mine, and I was actually kinda hoping you could help us out. I just… I can’t work out how to get him out of it.”  
  
Valentine was reading the contract as she held it aloft, his cigarette clasped between the fingers that scanned down the page, and Charon was about to say something when Sloan deftly took it from him with an admonishing _tut_.   
  
“ _No_ fire near the contract,” she told him, dropping it into an ashtray on her desk..  
  
“Why not? Seems like a good idea, if you’ve a mind to free him. Which frankly, doll, I hope you do. This thing is…”  
  
“I know. It was my first thought. But keep reading. There’s a reason I haven’t done that.”  
  
His golden eyes flicked to her, and back to the contract, scanning the page until he found the line in question.  
  
“…Ah.”  
  
“Yes. If the contract goes, so does he, apparently. I guess whoever made it wanted to make sure he couldn’t get out of it that easily. It might not even _work_ , but I’m not willing to take that chance. So no fire near the contract.” She turned the page over, her eyes drifting over the ancient writing. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do about it. I was hoping you might have some ideas, or at least help me look for something that could help.”  
  
“Sure, doll.” He reached out for the contract. “You want to leave this with me…?”  
  
“Oh — no, sorry.” She shook her head rapidly, retreating to the lockbox to put it back safe where it belonged. “I trust you, Nick, with my life, you know that. But I don’t think it works that way. This contract is _mine_ , and it stays here under lock and key until I can find a safer place for it or find a way to break it.”  
  
He looked surprised, but nodded. “Sure, if you like. It would just make it easier to track down any possible solutions.”  
  
“I know it would. But I don’t want to risk something happening to it, or someone else getting their hands on it — I don’t know what they’d _do_. He’s basically a six-foot-eight weapon. You should see him fight, it’s unbelievable. Anyway, if _you_ take it, then maybe _you’re_ the employer. I don’t know how that works.” She shot a look at Charon. “How does that work?”  
  
“The contract can be borrowed and returned,” he said, “but I go with it.”  
  
“See?”  
  
“Well, that’s a problem.” The synth retrieved his cigarette, and took a drag. “I’ll look into it, dollface, but no promises.”  
  
“Thanks, Nick. You’re the best.” She pressed a kiss to his grey cheek.  
  
“Sure. You stopping in town a while?”  
  
She shrugged. “Just got back from the Dugout with Ellie and Piper, you know, girl talk. I only really came to pick up a couple things and check in with you. Has MacCready been in town?”  
  
“So _that’s_ where Ellie’d got to. Hope you girls didn’t get up to any mischief.” He smirked, and  flicked the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray. “MacCready was here a little while ago. Not for long, though. Stopped at the Dugout a couple weeks back, then said he was heading north up to a settlement somewhere.”  
  
“I’ll find him. Promised him we’d shoot some Gunners together.”  
  
“Sounds like fun,” he said, in a voice drier than the Mojave.   
  
“Pfff, I won’t invite you to come, then.”  
  
Valentine smirked at her, and then touched the brim of his hat.  
  
“I ought to get going. Nice meeting you, fella. Do me a favour and don’t leave the house. I’d rather not have to spring Sloan here from Diamond City Jail.”  
  
When the door had closed behind him, Sloan turned to Charon with a grin that threatened to split her head in two.  
  
“Isn’t he a _stitch_? First time I saw him I wanted to _scream._ ”  
  
Screaming did not seem quite in keeping with the kiss on the cheek and the hug upon seeing him, let alone the look on her face now.   
  
“He frightened you?”  
  
“What? Oh — no — I mean he’s _interesting_ looking, but I meant that he’s Humphrey fucking Bogart. I could have _died_. I used to love Noir flicks something fierce and he may as well have been standing under a lamppost in the rain. I felt like I should be wearing a dress and a wide-brimmed hat or something.” She waved a hand. “This was before I’d been to Goodneighbor and seen all their Neighbourhood Watchmen and the Triggermen and so on, all I really knew was Diamond City. So, I go down into the subway to look for Nick, and suddenly there are all these gangsters from three hundred years ago in spats and suspenders shooting me with tommy guns. That’s when I went from _this wasteland is an unending source of pain and misery_ to _holy shit, the future is awesome!_ Now, of course, I’ve kinda settled somewhere in the middle. It’s an awesome unending source of pain and misery.” She grinned.  
  
Charon smirked at her, and decided to play along. “Perhaps they made an error,” he said, “and downloaded his personality from a movie instead of a person.”  
  
“Ha! Right? He’s just the _best_ thing. And such a sweetheart. He’s done things for me that I’d never ask of anyone. He put his life and his mind on the line for me.“ She shot him a look, and the amusement faded from her face. “He’s an easy person to get along with. I’m serious, if I die, he’d be a better employer than anyone else here.”  
  
“Why do you want to free me?” She was silent, mind elsewhere, and he pressed the issue. “Have I been unsatisfactory?”  
  
She started. “ _God,_ no! I like you just fine!” Her eyes wandered away from him, and she tugged on a lock of her hair. “Actually, I was hoping, even if I did find a way to free you, you might still come with me sometimes, when you felt like it. I’ve kinda gotten used to having you around.”  
  
“You need not worry. Smoothskin, if there had been a way around the contract, I would have found it by now.” She looked deflated, and he stepped forward to rest his hand, briefly, on her shoulder. “I know every word of my contract by heart. I’ve read it over and over and over again. I’ve had well over a hundred years to think of a way out of it. It doesn’t exist.”  
  
She nodded, sadness and stubbornness warring briefly on her face. She was not one for giving in, he knew. But then she sighed, and looked away.   
  
“I guess you won’t remember, but I was wondering whether they knew when they wrote it how long you would live.”  
  
“Probably not. I doubt they expected me to last a normal human lifespan, let alone centuries.”  
  
“You must be so tired. Living that long, I mean, not the no sleeping part.” She blinked, and looked around. “It’s safe here, though. If the guards were going to bust down my door and drag you out of here, they would have done it already. So it’s safe, or safe enough. You can sleep here.” She seemed to become almost excited by the idea. “I should find you a bed — there are some cots up top, but they’d be too small for you. I’ll have to — I’m not the best at building, but I’m sure I can scav some materials, make you one that’ll fit.”  
  
“No need, smoothskin.”  
  
“But you should sleep,” she insisted.   
  
A sleeping mat on the floor was all he needed, and she pulled out a spare. When he had carried it to the upper level, he turned to see her tottering up the stairs after him with her arms piled high with blankets and pillows, her eyes barely visible over the top.  
  
“You’ll kill yourself, not looking where you’re going,” he scolded her. “Give those here.”  
  
She just grinned at him, and rubbed at the tip of her nose.   
  
“We head out early,” she said. “I’m going to bed. You know where I am if you need me, but feel free to,” she shrugged, “you know. My home is your home, and all that.”  
  
“Thank you,” he said, and meant it more than he expected.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nick Valentine: too good for this world, too pure. And, of course, he has his own key to Home Plate.
> 
> I use a great Home Plate mod that I think is a beta version of Aloot's Home Plate, and thus no longer available. Bummer.


	11. Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So long, Diamond City.

They left in the middle of the night.  
  
Well, the mistress might have thought of it more as very early in the morning, fond as she was of the dawn, but to Charon it was very much still the middle of the night. He had slept like the dead, his body trying to catch up on months worth of rest all at once, and hadn’t woken until a shrill whistle sliced through his skull and he peered over the landing to see her waiting one flight down, hands on her hips, a smile on her face.  
  
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, “but it’s time we left. I’d like to get out of here before the town wakes up, just in case. The other side of it is, the night shift guards tend to be a bit more on the grumpy side. The quicker we get out, the better.”  
  
He grunted his assent, and rolled off the sleeping mat. He pulled on his shirt and boots before getting to his feet, and as he stood he saw she was still waiting for him on the next landing.  
  
She was drumming her fingers against her hips. “I’m going to give you an order,” she said, her eyes wandering over the walls as she thought. “I’m going to tell you why, first.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
“If the guards get funny, if they… say one of them shoved me. What does your contract say about that? The protection part, I mean. Would you have to respond?”  
  
“It would be difficult to resist,” he replied. “I know what I am made for. I will act before the contract forces me to act.”  
  
“But if I ask you to… I mean, if you know it’s not appropriate to respond…”  
  
“The contract will exert its pressure until I do.” He picked up a piece of his heavy combat armour, and settled it over his shoulders. “There will be time. You will be able to order me to stand down.”  
  
“So that does work, then, ordering you to stand down?” She chewed on her lip.  
  
“Yes. It is easier when the order is specific. The order will override the directive to protect, although…” he hesitated, “if you are in great danger, there will be conflict.”  
  
“Conflict?”  
  
“Between the contradicting orders. The employer must be protected.”  
  
“Very well. Here is your order, Charon: if a guard in Diamond City harms me or expresses, in any way, intent to harm me, you must not respond unless I call for your help.” She paused. “Is that all right?”  
  
“Yes. You are expecting trouble?” He finished buckling his chest piece and reached down for another piece of armour.  
  
“They’ve had a day to stew about you being here. I don’t expect them to get violent, but if someone starts threatening me it’d be helpful if you don’t shove your shotgun in their face. And, Charon, this is important. Look at me.”  
  
He stopped, straightening from strapping on a leg guard. Her forehead was furrowed.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“If shit hits the fan, you can defend yourself. You _should_ defend yourself. Do what you need to do, and get out of the city. I’ll join you when I can.”  
  
This order prickled in his mind.  
  
“I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone,” he admitted, bending to buckle his armour.  
  
“It probably won’t be an issue. I just wanted to make sure.”  
  
Twenty minutes and a breakfast of fried cram later, they were headed out the door. The mistress had explained that there were a couple of things she needed to pick up in the direction they were heading, but first they were to meet her friend MacCready at a settlement she knew. Then they would head west, stop off at a place she had marked on her pip-boy, and then take out a group of Gunners. Charon had even heard their names, mentioned by his former employer. They were known to be tough, even by Gunner standards.  
  
“MacCready used to be a Gunner,” Sloan explained as she locked the door behind her. “He decided to leave them behind, do solo mercenary work. They didn’t like that, and we had to put down a group of them earlier. People he knew personally. These guys don’t know him, but they know he killed the others, so they’ve been sending people after him. Guess we hit a nerve, or something, and —”  
  
“Hey, vault-dweller.”  
  
A guard stepped out from the shadow beneath a store front, and nudged her with the butt of his gun. Charon’s hands tightened around his shotgun, but he did nothing. He could do nothing.  
  
“Hey, uh… guard.”  
  
“You going to get the fuck out of town with that ghoul of yours? You know they ain’t welcome here.”  
  
She bristled, but held her temper. “Go bitch to the Mayor. He goes where I go, and you’ll have to deal with it. He hasn’t been any trouble. You want to run me out of town?”  
  
“It ain’t worth it. Get outta my sight with that thing. Can’t stand looking at it.”  
  
They managed to avoid any further altercations on their way out of the city. A few other guards looked their way, but when it was obvious they were leaving, made no move to interrupt them. For her part, the mistress was fuming.  
  
“Sorry about that,” Sloan said when they were clear of the city gates. “Fucking assholes.”  
  
“I am used to it, smoothskin.”  
  
“Well, I’m not.”  
  
He watched her fiddling with her pip-boy, face tight with agitation, and came to a realisation.  
  
“Someone gave you trouble in the bar,” he deduced.  
  
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”  
  
He snorted. “Did you start a fight and break all the alcohol?”  
  
She looked up at him sharply, and broke into a laugh. “No, I didn’t do that. There’s space in the Dugout, they organise their chairs and tables with the odd bar fight in mind. The guys that run it think it’s funny. Or one of them does, anyway. They’ve staged one or two themselves. Anyway, it wasn’t a fight, it was a… a _spirited discussion_.”  
  
“It would have caused less trouble to leave me outside,” he grumbled.  
  
“I know, but it just…” She raked her fingers back through her hair, and sighed. “I _hate_ this shit. Hancock, he — he used to live here, a long time ago. It was his home, he never really fit there but… And now he can’t go back, even if he wanted to.” She worried her lip beneath one canine. “I think that’s part of why he did it.”  
  
“Did what?”  
  
She shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind. It’s not right, that’s all. How they treat ghouls. I brought you in because I wanted to show you my place and introduce you to Nick, and anyway I couldn’t leave you out there by yourself overnight. I didn’t do it to make a _point_ , though I admit I enjoyed rankling them a little.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess I understand why you call us ‘smoothskins’ now. Gotta call the bastards something.”  
  
“Did you win this… spirited discussion?”  
  
She wouldn’t meet his eyes, bending her head to check her pip-boy map instead. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “But they’ll be leaving us alone, anyway.”  
  
Charon was intrigued, despite himself. He knew very well what humans said about ghouls. Few bothered to hide their contempt, or their disgust. What he _was_ curious about was what precisely she had said to defend him. It was unnecessary, even stupid — she lived here, she couldn’t afford to make enemies, and anyway she wouldn’t change anyone’s mind. It wasn’t as if Charon _needed_ defending. But he was curious, all the same.  
  
“What did you say?” he asked.  
  
She pursed her lips, and huffed a sigh. “If you _must_ know, I told them if they didn’t keep their noses out of my business, I’d cut their throats while they slept.”  
  
Charon straightened, forehead furrowing in surprise. There was an edge to her voice he hadn’t expected. It might be an empty threat, but he had no trouble understanding why whoever it was had believed her.  
  
“You are lucky they took you seriously,” he said, watching for her reaction.  
  
“I have a reputation now,” she told him. “Raiders, Gunners, super mutants. They don’t know how much of it is true, and they probably doubt I’d really go through with it, but it’s enough to make them cautious. They’d rather sleep easy than wonder.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “Of course, I wouldn’t actually do it. If I _did_ cut their throats, Nick would frown at me.”  
  
“You care for him. Valentine.”  
  
“Yes. He’s done more for me than anyone should have to do. It’s a long story.” She sighed, stretching out her shoulders. “He’s the first real friend I made in this place, aside from Dogmeat. I’d walk through fire for Nick. So I don’t want him to frown.” She frowned herself. “Leaves me in a difficult position. Nick frowning, or people talking shit about my ghoul bodyguard? Can’t have either.”  
  
“I don’t care what they say about me, smoothskin.”  
  
“ _I_ care.” She waved a hand. “Whatever. They can say what they want when I’m not there to overhear it. When they give us shit to our faces, though, that’s the line.”  
  
They walked on in relative silence, heading north through the outskirts of Boston, until she stilled and held up a hand.  
  
“Graveyard,” she said, her voice tight. “Might be ferals.”  
  
Charon scoffed at her. “Ferals are not zombies.”  
  
“I know, but I think there’s like… a morphic destiny, or something. That’s probably not what it’s called — but I’m sure there’s a word for it. Like they gravitate here. You find ferals in graveyards; haven’t you noticed?”  
  
“Ha? Bullshit.” He kicked a gravestone, and snickered at her. “There are no ferals here. They won’t crawl out of the graves, smoothskin.”  
  
She pouted, and rolled her eyes. “Fine, be that way. I’m still going to hide behind you.”  
  
They circled through the graveyard to the front of the church, and Charon stopped cold as he saw a feral standing in the middle of the road. It was still, unaware of them, its brain so rotted it was barely able to stand. Sloan peered around from behind him, and when he looked down at her she grinned at him despite her fear. It was clear she had no intention of letting this one pass.  
  
“Ferals don’t crawl out of graves, no sir! No ferals here!”  
  
He thought the smug look on her face might freeze that way. He scowled at her.  
  
“All right, smoothskin. Enough.”  
  
He lifted his shotgun and blew a hole through the pathetic creature’s chest. At the sound of the shot, more poured from the church, and she darted around, keeping him between her and the feral ghouls. Between the two of them they made short work of them. She didn’t even curl into a ball afterwards. Charon felt almost proud of her.  
  
“I toooold you.” She said, shaking only a little as they went in through the door. “Graveyards. I always find ferals in graveyards.”  
  
“Gloating is not becoming,” he growled, and she laughed.  
  
There was nothing much of interest in the church. The continued north, following the train tracks to a small settlement where a man spotted them and raised a hand in greeting.  
  
“MacCready,” Sloan said to Charon with a grin. “I’m not sure whether you’d like him much, but he’s a good friend of mine, so… try not to kill him if he annoys you, I guess.”  
  
She all but ran down the hill to meet this man, throwing her arms around him in a hug that he returned with equal enthusiasm. Charon followed at some distance, and they had already been exchanging news as he drew near. Sloan punched MacCready in the arm, and grinned at him.  
  
“MacCready, this is Charon! He… he’s like a bodyguard, sort of. He works for me.” She flashed her grin at Charon next, and thumped her friend on the back. “Charon, this is Robert MacCready. He’s one of my best friends. I hired him once, as an extra gun, you know? First time I was in Goodneighbor, and I’d had such a hard time getting there I thought I could stand to have some help getting back out again. We hang out sometimes, killing things and making caps.”  
  
MacCready had grinned at her, but when he turned to Charon his eyebrows rose in surprise, and he tilted his head to one side.  
  
 “Hey. Don’t I know you?”  
  
Charon stared down at him. He was young, with wispy facial hair and the look of a sniper about his eyes. “I should not think so, smoothskin,” he said, and folded his arms.  
  
“I’m fu— I’m friggin’ sure I know you. Super tall, grumpy-looking. Red hair. Where have I seen that scowl before?” He snapped his fingers several times before it came to him, and he pointed at him. “You came to Little Lamplight once. With that guy. Whatsisface.”  
  
“The children’s settlement? In the Capital Wasteland?” Charon was shocked. He’d never thought of what happened to those kids after they left their little town. He had never expected to run into any of them ever again, let alone _here_. He was surprised enough the kid had recognised him.  
  
“You two _know_ each other?” Sloan’s face contorted into an expression of absolute glee. “Tell me _everything_.”  
  
“Not much to tell,” MacCready said, ducking his head. “He turned up with some guy back when I was at Little Lamplight and glowered at people for a bit, then they left again. Never said anything. Other guy was OK. Did a lot for the Capital Wasteland, in the end. Think he died, or something.”  
  
“I do not remember you,” Charon admitted.  
  
“Well of course not. I was like twelve years old! And short for my age.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You look the same, though. Advantages of being a ghoul, I guess.”  
  
They headed south-west, Charon walking behind them as they linked arms and chatted. It was beyond strange to find someone from the Capital Wasteland out here, and he didn’t know how to feel about it. The man — still a boy, really — was almost surprisingly cheerful. The children at Little Lamplight had been tough little shits, and the Gunners were tougher still.  
  
It was unnerving to be recognised. Occasionally, between DC and the Commonwealth, he had run into people who had heard of him, through contacts at Underworld or traders and travellers. Ghouls lived long lives and they liked to gossip. No doubt there were ghouls out there who remembered him from long before Ahzrukhal. His contract was a rare thing, and it stuck in people’s minds. It had been a long time, though, since anyone had recognised him. And a human, at that. At least the kid didn’t _know_ anything. There were aspects of his reputation he would rather Sloan never found out.  
  
MacCready said something that made her laugh and press her shoulder against his, and Charon scowled. He tried to focus on keeping an eye out for potential dangers, but eventually he found himself staring at the back of the man’s head with a growing sense of resentment. It was a while before he bothered to examine the feeling, and when he did he grimaced to himself.  
  
He was feeling _supplanted_. He’d been travelling with her for a month now, they’d gotten used to one another. He _liked_ her, as employers went. He hadn’t realised how much of an unwelcome disruption having someone else join them would be. _He_ should be walking beside her. Instead he was behind, as he had always been. Like the servant he was.  
  
Sloan looked over her shoulder at him, the way she used to their first week, and Charon looked away so he wouldn’t have to return her smile.  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sloan has a rank in Mister Sandman.
> 
> I tend to think of Sloan - well, of SS in general really but that's mostly just how I play - as manically trying to make the best of a seriously fucked up situation. ("Oh, okay, the world has ended, everything is trying to kill me including the water, there are immortal corpse-people walking around and the bugs are bigger than my head HAHA EVERYTHING IS FINE pass me my gun.") Occasionally there are cracks where she'll get very angry or desperately upset about her whole situation, like when she yelled at Charon about the vault. Another such moment is in the next chapter. Part of the long slow journey of healing.


	12. Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charon hears a conversation that makes him deeply uncomfortable
> 
> and then ACTION SEQUENCE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Uhhhh excuse me fic writer, Queen probably wouldn't have existed in the Fallout universe."
> 
> You make a valid point my friend but consider this: I don't care
> 
> Also it is awkward as hell to have Charon just *stand there* all the time while Sloan's like "hey this is my new chum and here is his life story" but I feel like there are limited options. OH WELL.

They came upon the bend in the river at sunset, and it was a picture of stillness and peace. At some point it had broken its banks, flooding the ruined buildings, and someone had built bridges between those that remained.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” MacCready murmured.  
  
The mistress turned and looked at the man, for a long moment. And then she began to cry.  
  
“Oh — oh, jeez.” He gingerly put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, boss, don’t cry, all right?”  
  
She sank to the ground, her legs pulled up in front of her, and wound her fingers into her hair.  
  
“It used to be _green_.”  
  
“I know, I know.” MacCready crouched beside her, a hand on her back.  
  
“It was _green_. The water was so clear, and there were _ducks_ , there were _swans_ , and it was so _beautiful_ , MacCready. You don’t know. It was so beautiful. And now there’s _nothing_. The whole world. The ducks. We destroyed it. How? How _could_ we? It used to be _green_.”  
  
MacCready settled himself on the ground beside her, and sat with her until her tears stopped and her breathing slowed, looking out over the river.   
  
Charon followed his gaze. It _was_ beautiful. Maybe it had been more beautiful once, was more beautiful in his mistress’s mind, but it was beautiful now all the same. Reeds and grasses grew along its edges, and the sunset shone down upon the water in pinks and purples. There was a peace here.   
  
“We can make camp after we get what I’m looking for,” the mistress said, and sniffled. “The shacks look safe enough. And,” she looked over at her friend, “it is beautiful here.”  
  
MacCready gave her a look Charon could not decipher, and nodded.   
  
“I’ll take first watch,” he said, standing and stretching his arms above his head.  
  
“ _I_ will stand watch,” Charon grumbled.   
  
“You want first watch? In that case, I’ll take third. I hate middle watch.”  
  
Charon scowled at him. “You do not understand. I will take every watch. I do not sleep.”  
  
MacCready gave him a look of alarm, and his eyes darted to Sloan, standing slowly and wiping her hands across her face.  
  
“He doesn’t sleep?”  
  
“So he says. I haven’t been killed while he’s on watch, so I assume he stays awake.”  
  
“People _sleep_ , Sloan. Even ghouls.”  
  
“Hey, I’ve tried telling him. He sleeps in settlements okay, but never on the road. I think it’s in his nerves, or something.” She tapped two fingers against her skull. “Something in his programming, or maybe something ingrained. I don’t ask him about stuff like that much because he goes funny about the eyes.” She smiled fondly at him across the clearing.   
  
“I am _right here_ ,” Charon grumbled.  
  
“So you are. I’m going to root around for that baseball crap. Holler if a mirelurk drags itself out of the muck.”  
  
She found the items she was looking for, and she and the smoothskin mercenary made to set up camp while she sent Charon out to scout up and down the shore. There were, at one point, some raiders; he found their remains in a small camp behind a copse of trees. Now they were dead, victims of the ferals that hovered in the area, lying at rest in the mud. He killed them quickly, dispassionately, and continued on.  
  
He had scouted some distance to the north and south and found no other threats, beyond the odd mirelurk that sank back into the mud as he approached. No mirelurk kings, not even many eggs. He was returning to the houses on their little stilts, and heard conversation floating in the evening air.  
  
“So, you aren’t…?  
  
“No! God, ‘Creaders…”  
  
“What? I know the ghoul thing doesn’t bother you.”  
  
“I own his contract! That’d be… fucked up.”  
  
Charon paused. He could guess what they were discussing and this was not a conversation he wished to involve himself in. He glanced back the way he had come, wondering whether he should head back away from camp or whether it might be better to walk straight up there and disrupt this conversation. It did not particularly please him that they were talking about him in this way. Or that MacCready felt able to talk about the mistress in this way, for that matter. It made him uneasy.  
  
There was no way the mistress would consider inviting him to her bed. MacCready should not even have brought it up, it should have been fucking obvious. Charon hesitated at the bottom of the ramp, looking up at the shacks. A part of him was tempted to stay and listen, but he was unwilling to hear his employer outright call him ugly, and the larger part of him was desperate to be somewhere else. He was tense with a peculiar sort of shame and he hated it; he had done nothing, had no reason to feel ashamed.  
  
Done nothing but think thoughts about the curve of his employer’s hips that would never be reciprocated. He swallowed.  
  
“Explain it to me,” MacCready was saying.  
  
“He has to do whatever I say. It’d be… I mean, there’s a power imbalance there. It’d be wrong. Abusive.”  
  
 _That_ he did not expect. He drew a little closer.  
  
“So just, you know… order him to take control.” Charon could _hear_ the grin on the man’s face.  
  
“Yeah, and that’d work for all of five minutes before I get all caught up in the, you know, the _whatever_ and say something like ‘fuck me’.”  
  
“So?”   
  
“So he’d hear it as an order. ‘Creaders, he wouldn’t be able to _stop_. What if I didn’t realise? What if — it’s not like when I tell _you_ to do something. You can just say ‘hell no’ like you always do. _He_ can’t do that. I tell him to do something, and he does it, whether he _wants_ to or not.”  
  
“…Jesus. Yeah, that _is_ a bit f— a bit screwed up, huh?” MacCready paused for a moment, insects humming in the night air. “I guess we could always get you a ball gag. Hey! Ow! No hitting!”   
  
Charon did not know what this conversation meant, or how he felt about it, and he decided it would be best to put it from his mind altogether. He waited a little longer, until their laughter had quietened and the last of the light had died from the sky, before he walked up the rickety ramp to the shack in which they had made their camp.   
  
MacCready had a cigarette between his lips, and he gave Charon a wink.   
  
“Hey, big guy,” he said cheerfully. “Find anything?”  
  
“Some ferals,” he said with a scowl. That he could not make this man fear him was an irritation. Most people feared him, feared his height and his gun and his face, and if nothing else they feared the look in his eyes. Sloan did not fear him regardless of how much he glowered. She had no reason to, of course; the contract protected her. But this confidence had somehow infected her companion. Did he not know he could harm him? Or did he simply trust that Sloan would not allow him to be harmed?  
  
“They’re not close, are they? The ferals?” Sloan shivered. “I don’t want any creeping up on me in my sleep.”  
  
“I will keep watch,” he reminded her, and could not help but feel a little gratified by the way her face relaxed. “I killed the ones I could find. There may be some in the buildings on the other side of the river; I did not cross.”  
  
“We should be fine, this distance,” MacCready said, looking across the water as if he had any hope of seeing them. “Mirelurks, though…”  
  
“They will have no way to climb the ramp. We will be safe here.”  
  
His mistress was deeply fond of this MacCready. _One of my best friends_ , she’d said when she had introduced them. He still had not expected them to be so close. They behaved together like cousins, siblings: children still and off on some wild adventure, where the dangers were only imaginary. This man had been a mercenary, a Gunner, and Gunners were tough and they were ruthless. Yet he and Sloan sat together telling silly ghost stories by the fire as their dinner cooked, their faces animated, their eyes alight.   
  
It made Charon angry, and he did not know why.  
  
His nightly watch was uneventful. Sloan woke in the second hour before dawn, and shook a bleary MacCready awake.  
  
“We strike early,” she told him when he complained. “Early is better. They’ll still be half-asleep.”  
  
“ _I_ am still half-asleep,” he moaned.   
  
“Yeah, well, huff some jet. I want skulls in my crosshairs at first light.”  
  
“You’re _grumpy_ in the morning.” MacCready yawned, his jaw clicking, and went to stoke the embers of last night’s campfire at the bottom of the ramp. He fished something from his pack, and before long Charon could smell coffee.  
  
It lured Sloan back from her morning ablutions. Her pip-boy was ticking faintly; apparently she had judged it a reasonable risk to splash some river water on her face.   
  
“Coffee, MacCready? You’re a good man.”  
  
“Who says you’re getting any? Maybe I don’t want to serve coffee to a woman who wakes me up at _four in the morning_.” He wandered over to Charon, and held up a tin mug that looked as if it had been purloined from army surplus. Charon stared at him until he knocked it against his arm. “Go on. Coffee.”  
  
Charon hesitated, and curled his hand around the warm metal.   
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” He gave him a warm smile, and turned back to the fire, where Sloan was pouring coffee into her own tin mug.  
  
“You’ll thank me when we’re killing Gunners in their beds,” she said when he made a face.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Drink your damn coffee.”  
  
This would be a hell of a fight, and they all knew it. It wasn’t long before the cheerfulness had fallen from MacCready’s demeanour, and Charon was surprised how much older it made him seem. He was checking and rechecking his rifle with a serious focus that he had not expected.   
  
“You want another gun?” Sloan asked Charon. “We’ll be hitting them from further away at first. These guys will be up on the overpass and I’d like to take out a few before we have to get up there.”  
  
He nodded, and she passed him her combat rifle.   
  
“I know of these Gunners,” he said, checking the gun and loading it. “The ones I was with knew them, talked about them. I believe they have an assaultron.”  
  
She exhaled. “Well, those things are always a bastard, but I guess we should have expected it. Gunners are prepared for trouble. Still… I hate the way they rush you down.”  
  
“Stay behind me. You will be fine.”  
  
She gave him a strange sort of smile, but didn’t reply.   
  
It was always a pleasure to watch her with a sniper rifle. There was a serenity to her face as she lined up her shot, and a smile of sweet satisfaction whenever she found her mark. In the gloom of early morning their enemies could not see them, and she and MacCready had taken out three of the Gunners above and two on the ground before they managed to locate them and started firing back.   
  
As soon as the first bodies fell, Charon started moving to flank. He grinned to himself as he slipped through the pre-dawn gloom, gun in his hands. He circled the guards on the ground, closing in with his combat rifle, and he nailed one of the Gunners in the temple and another in the knee before they’d realised he was there. He darted behind one of the overpass’s struts, a laser round glancing off his armour. His grin grew. Gunners were a better fight than raiders. Better armed, better armoured, better organised. He was going to enjoy this.  
  
Charon leant out of cover and put a bullet in the face of the wounded Gunner. There was one more, and he’d prefer to have it dead before Sloan and her friend reached him.   
  
He circled around the overpass struts, swapping out his rifle for his shotgun. _Here, Gunner Gunner Gunner… Come out and play._  
  
A laser round hit the back of his neck, and he hissed as his flesh burned, turning to unload his shotgun into the Gunner’s chest. The man staggered, his armour absorbing most of the shot, but his momentary waver gave Charon time to shoot another round and he fell with a chunk of flesh taken out of his head.  
  
“Got ‘em all?” Sloan’s eyes were shining as she ran up to him.  
  
He nodded. “Think so. More above.”  
  
“That burn looks nasty.”  
  
“Save the stims until we’re done. We may need them for more than this.”  
  
She shook her head. “I’d rather you were at your best for this. If they have an assaultron…”  
  
She was right, and he nodded, pulling a stimpak from his belt and inserting the needle high on his shoulder, under the collar of his shirt. The burnt flesh eased back into the old pattern of scars, and he rubbed his hands across it, satisfied.   
  
“We ready?” She looked at MacCready, who hefted his rifle, and nodded.  
  
Sloan pulled a tommy gun from her pack, and led them onto the elevator.  
  
“All right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”  
  
The Gunners knew they were coming, and that made this leg of the fight a far more dangerous one. Assaultrons were quick and brutal, and they carried some heavy firepower. The blast lasers on those things… Charon set his jaw. The contract was flooding his veins with adrenaline, heightening his senses, tuning his mind to a sharp focus. It was one of the few advantages of the thing: in a fight like this, when the employer’s safety was at risk, he was a weapon of brutal efficiency.   
  
The elevator shuddered to a halt, and in seconds Charon took stock of the situation. Ten Gunners, at least. One in power armour. Three turrets. The assaultron, its laser charging, was the primary risk. Those things could kill in an instant. It rushed them, guns firing, and Charon pushed Sloan behind him as he circled, firing twice, three times. She crouched, leaning past him to fire her tommy gun into the robot, and on Charon’s fourth shot it fell, just as its laser finished charging.   
  
One problem down. Thirteen to go.  
  
Sloan darted around him, moving left behind a row of makeshift cover. A frag grenade arced through the air to land among a handful of Gunners and they scattered, but not quickly enough. Two of them were down, one dead, the other alive but screaming, his leg severed.   
  
MacCready was somewhere behind Charon, his aim careful, changing positions after every shot. Sloan was quick, rushing between cover to take out the rapid-fire turrets and give them all more room to manoeuvre. Charon tried to draw the Gunners’ fire, making himself obvious as he bore down on them one by one.  
  
Another Gunner fell and he was out of ammo, twisting to drive the butt of his gun into a Gunner’s face until it was a mess of blood. A laser round reflected off his spaulder, and he ducked behind the rotted hulk of a bus to reload his shotgun.   
  
He’d lost track of Sloan, and the contract was tightening its grip on him. This was the point where things became difficult, where the failings of the contract outweighed the advantages. The contract’s obsession with the safety of the employer would bear down on him until his ability to think was drowned out, and he became a killing machine, heedless of his own safety. He needed to find her.  
  
He heard her yelling curses, and turned to see her throwing herself at the man in the power armour, vaulting over the side of a car and side-stepping his fist. Charon was barely aware of moving, he was so focused on his mistress, the man, and the other Gunner circling behind her.  
  
He bent to smash his shoulder into the woman, and she stumbled backwards, flailing just for a moment before she fell over the side of the overpass. He ignored her, turning, raising his gun just in time to see the man slump inside his power armour, blood spurting from his neck.   
  
Sloan was off again, muscles bunching as she leapt over a corpse and slid around the side of a truck to send a hail of bullets into the last of the Gunners.  
  
Charon took quick stock. Ten bodies, one broken robot, and three piles of smoking metal. Done. The contract’s grip eased.  
  
Sloan reappeared, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist.   
  
“That was a good one,” she said, breathing heavily. “Nicely done, fellas. ‘Scuse me, I’m going to run around yelling for a bit until this psycho wears off.”  
  
He watched her with a growing sense of amusement as she hurtled around the camp. He’d never seen her on psycho before. She was exultant, yelling triumphant slogans with her hands in the air, climbing on top of things only to jump off again.   
  
“ _Weeeeee are the chaampions, my frieend…_ ” She landed a vicious kick in a dead Gunner’s ribs. “ _And weeee’ll keep on fighting ‘till the end!_ ”  
  
“I wish she wouldn’t take that stuff,” MacCready said with a smile. “The fight always finishes before it wears off and then I have to listen to _The Best of Queen_.”  
  
“ _Noooo time for looooosers, ‘cause weeee are the chaaaaampions!_ ”  
  
“I do not mind her singing,” Charon confessed. “Though usually she is more in tune.” He crouched down beside the Gunner in the power armour, and pulled the fusion core from the back. Those things were useful.   
  
MacCready shrugged. “It’s the psycho. She attacks those notes like they said something about her mother.”  
  
Sloan stopped, the tension dissipating from her muscles. Slowly, she slumped down onto the road, and splayed out on her back with a sigh.   
  
“Man,” she said, panting slightly, “I love that stuff.”  
  
Charon picked his way across the battlefield and bent down to grasp her hand. He helped pull her upright, and then handed her the fusion core.  
  
“In future, mistress, _tell_ me before you take one of those. It is not helpful to see you rushing someone in _power armour_.”  
  
“They turn slow,” she told him. “You gotta get in there quick because someone in power armour usually carries heavy weapons, and the further you are away, the less they have to turn to keep up with you. Harder to dodge.”  
  
Charon wasn’t really expecting this level of tactical reasoning from someone who had just come down off psycho.   
  
“Plus they’re clumsy in those things,” she was saying. “If you’re close in they have to turn more quickly and it’s easier to get behind them and unload your gun behind their ear or smash ‘em in the fusion core.” She hefted the one he had handed her, and grinned at him. “Good fight, huh?”  
  
“It was,” he said.   
  
“We make a good team.” She smiled at him, and clapped him on the back before wandering over to MacCready to see what he’d found on the bodies. “Anything good, ‘Creaders?”  
  
“Caps, ammo. Couple of stims. Nothing interesting. I think there was a terminal back there, though.”  
  
“Safe?”  
  
“Dunno. Couple of locked trunks. I’ll get one if you get the other.”  
  
She toddled over to the terminal and bent to hack the password, her eyes eyebrows pinched together, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. It took her a while, and when it beeped an affirmation she grinned.  
  
“Ah ha! Ah, damnit. I was hoping there was a hidden safe somewhere. It’s just some guy’s diary.” Her eyes ran down the screen. “Oh, shit, listen: ‘Marvin’s squad got wiped out last week. Told him he shouldn’t have trusted that damn ghoul.’ That was us! Ha!”  
  
“That was _you_ ,” Charon said, and made a face.   
  
“I like to think that you were joining in in spirit.”  
  
He could not help but smile at that.  
  
“You assume I thought you would be any better an employer than the Gunners,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back against the van. “I have learnt not to hope.”  
  
“Well that’s f— frickin’ bleak,” MacCready said.  
  
Charon frowned, and shot a look at Sloan, bent over a lockbox with a bobby pin in her hand.  
  
“He doesn’t swear,” he said. “What is wrong with him?”  
  
“Robert is trying to be a better person,” she said without looking up.  
  
“You swear,” he pointed out. “You are a good person.”  
  
She beamed at him. “You think so? I’m glad.” She turned back to her task, and the lock clicked open. “The swearing is symbolic. The act of trying not to curse means he is paying attention to what he says and what he does. It’s actually pretty smart.”  
  
“I’d never thought of it that way,” MacCready admitted. “I just — you know. Made a promise.” He smirked at himself. “I know it’s stupid. But I’m trying to be better. And it’s hard, when you’re used to being… you know.”  
  
Sloan tossed the man a bag of caps, and punched him companionably on the shoulder.  
  
“Come on,” she said. “There’s got to be a safe somewhere around here, and I intend to find it.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured MacCready's response to a new guy turning up would probably be "so, you guys screwing, or what?"
> 
> Bless this terrible man <3


	13. Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just wish you'd kept your mouth shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was reading over this chapter today, adding a couple of paragraphs and tweaking.... and I realised I could cut out this entire chapter and just write "they left MacCready at a bend in the river" or something. Seeing as that's basically all this chapter is for. 
> 
> But then we wouldn't get to have fun with MacCready and he doesn't turn up again for aaaaaaaaaaages so let's make the most of him while we can.

They didn’t find a safe, but the trunks had plenty of ammo even if the armour wasn’t of any use to them. Sloan let MacCready keep the caps, in exchange for dropping off in Diamond City the baseball memorabilia she had found the night before, and for lugging the Gunners’ entire cache of alcohol off to Goodneighbor. Charon watched them both as they packed up their loot, enjoying the sense of peace that came after a good fight. A peace that the humans did not appear to share.   
  
“Can’t _you_ do it?” MacCready asked as she wrapped yet another bottle of rum in a bloodstained shirt and slipped it into a Gunner’s backpack. “I’m just saying, that thing looks pretty heavy.”  
  
“No, I can’t do it,” she told him, bending down for another bottle. “We’re not heading back to Goodneighbor right away. We’re heading north. Back up to Sanctuary Hills.” She lifted her eyes to his face, just for a moment. “I’m going to bury Nate.”  
  
“Oh.” MacCready shifted his weight from foot to foot, and then pulled off his hat to rake his hand back through his hair. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is — actually I don’t, I mean, there wasn’t much of her _left_ after — but I uh… I get what you must be going through.”  
  
“I know you do, ‘Creaders.” She handed him the bag, and gave him a sad smile.   
  
“You don’t want me to come with?”  
  
She shook her head, and gestured to Charon, perched on the end of an old van.   
  
“I got Charon. I wanted to… He needs to see the vault.”   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She nodded. “The contract means he goes where I go. He’s going to be stuck with me for a while, and I just thought… I thought I’d make more sense to him if he knew what it was like down there. So…”  
  
“…He needs to see the vault.”  
  
She smiled at him. “Yeah. But I still need someone to take this alcohol through to Goodneighbor.”  
  
“Why’s the alcohol got to go to Goodneighbor? They run out or something?” MacCready set the bag carefully on the ground. “I thought Hancock set up some kind of deal with the Dugout. Plus there’s that weird beer robot you found…”  
  
Sloan shot Charon a look, and he grumbled, clearing his throat.  
  
“I started a bar fight, at the Third Rail,” he said. “Some of the bottles were broken.”  
  
MacCready winced. “Ouch. How mad was Hancock?”  
  
“The kind of mad where he smiles all the time,” Sloan said.  
  
“Oh, man.”  
  
“And this is why you’re taking booze to the Third Rail.”  
  
He let out a theatrical sigh. “Fine. But you owe me one.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Name your price, asshole.”  
  
“Nah, I’m kidding.” He grinned at her. “You _did_ just help me kill a whole lot of Gunners.”  
  
“ _And_ I let you keep all the caps.” She had started gathering up the Gunners’ weapons, checking them over, and setting the ones she liked to one side. She looked them over with her hands on her hips, and then picked a rifle from the top of the pile and tossed it to Charon. “What do you think, big guy? Not the best I’ve seen, but you need some more guns. It’ll tide you over until I can find you something better.”  
  
“I _like_ my gun,” he said, a little defensive.  
  
“Hey, _I_ like your gun. That shotgun is serious business, but you could do with a secondary, at least. And a side-arm. Best to be prepared.” She gestured to the little collection she had made. “If you don’t like that rifle, Gunners always have plenty of energy weapons. I’d just feel better if you had something longer range on hand. I’ll buy you something better next time we’re in Goodneighbor.”  
  
Charon did not know how to respond to that , so he ignored it, and studied the collection of weapons. Mostly lasers, unfortunately.  
  
“Energy weapons are not my preference,” he said.  
  
“Not mine, either. No kick. Oh, but if you want it, there’s a fat man in the larger trunk.”  
  
He raised a brow at her.  
  
“You seriously want me carrying a nuke thrower, smoothskin?”  
  
“Just try not to aim it at me.” She grinned at him.   
  
“I will take the rifle.”  
  
He checked it over, sliding some bullets into the chamber, and aimed down the sights. It wasn’t as good as the one he had borrowed from Sloan, but it would tide him over. Once he gave it a good clean, anyway.   
  
MacCready was humming to himself, clearly impatient, and he hefted the bag of alcohol over one shoulder with a grunt. “Well, boss? We got everything?”   
  
“I think so.” She clicked through her pip-boy, examining her map. “Let’s go.”  
  
They headed back down the Gunners’ elevator. Dawn had come and gone, and the morning light was pale gold across the Commonwealth.  
  
“Say what you like about Gunners,” Sloan said with a quiet sigh. “They know how to pick a room with a view.”  
  
They took their time as they made their way back the way they had come. Sloan and MacCready apparently had some catching up to do, and they were in no particular hurry, so they travelled across the Commonwealth at a leisurely stroll. It was a pleasant spring day, the sun warm on their faces, glinting off the river as they followed it north. After a while he could hear her singing, her voice carrying back towards him on the breeze, while MacCready voiced his objections regarding her choice of song.  
  
“ _I have seen it estimated, somewhere between death and birth, there are now three thousand million people living here on earth…_ ”  
  
“Not any more.”  
  
“There _might_ be, for all you know,” she said, and snorted. “ _And the stock-piled mass destruction of the nuclear powers-that-be, equals, for each man and woman, twenty tons of TNT._ ”  
  
“You’re so freaking morbid.”  
  
“You could sing along, you know.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Suit yourself. _Father, mother, son or daughter — twenty tons of TNT._ See, you should sing that bit. The response line. _Give us land and seed and water — twenty tons of TNT. Children have no need of sharing, at each new nativity… Come the ghostly magi bearing twenty tons of TNT._ ”  
  
“This song is _depressing_. You have a problem, boss. You need to talk to someone.”  
  
Charon heard her laughter as she shoved MacCready and he staggered to one side with a grin.  
  
“ _Ends the tale that has no sequel — twenty tons of TNT. Now in death are all men equal — twenty tons of TNT. Teach me how to love my neighbour, do to him as he to me, share the fruits of all our labour… twenty tons of TNT._ ”  
  
“Our neighbour _bombed us._ So we bombed them. Or… maybe the other way around, I guess.”  
  
“That’s the _point_ , MacCready. It’s _satirical._ It’s a protest song. 'Do to him as he to me', 'share the fruits of all our labour'... It's about mutually assured destruction. Nuclear proliferation.”  
  
“You don’t sing protest songs _after_ the nuclear holocaust. It’s freakin’ messed up.” He pointed a finger at her. “ _You_ have problems. _Problems_.”  
  
She laughed at him, turning back to look at Charon and walking backwards to keep pace with MacCready.  
  
“Hey, Charon, _why_ are you all the way back there?” she asked him. “I can’t keep track of you all the way back there.”  
  
Charon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You should be aware of what is behind you,” he scolded her, evading the question. “This will be good practice.”  
  
“Nah, I get it,” MacCready said over his shoulder. He bent his head to light a cigarette and tossed the match to the ground. “She has a nice butt. Better view from back there.”  
  
Sloan twisted her mouth to one side, and elbowed him in the ribs.  
  
“Ow! God, Sloan, you have bony elbows.”  
  
“Leave the man alone or I’ll let him kick your ass.”  
  
“Aw, come on! He’s bigger’n me.”  
  
“You two are children,” Charon grumbled.  
  
“He’s a bad influence!” Sloan laughed.   
  
“Oh, _I’m_ the bad influence. Who taught who how to pick locks, huh?”  
  
She grinned sheepishly down at her toes, and paused until Charon drew level and she fell in beside him.   
  
“Sorry about him,” she said, loudly enough for MacCready to hear. “He didn’t have a mother. Wasn’t raised right.”  
  
“It’s fine, smoothskin,” Charon told her. “Though I would not mind kicking his ass.”  
  
“Yeah.” She laughed. “He has that effect on people.”  
  
They spotted a flooded town at a bend in the river, and MacCready paused ahead of them.  
  
“I should cross at the bridge down here,” he said over his shoulder, sounding almost apologetic. “You want to stop for lunch first, or…?”  
  
Charon looked down at Sloan, and saw her worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked down at the settlement.  
  
“Is this not a good place to stop?” he asked her, surveying the area for potential dangers.   
  
“Ferals,” she said, “in the water. Lots and lots of them. Shoot one and more crawl out of the water like fuckin’ _marsh zombies_.” She shivered. “If we’re going to eat, we’re doing it back here on the hill. Away from the river.”   
  
They found a nice enough spot, with some fallen logs that seemed stable enough to sit on. Sloan wandered off a small distance for some privacy in the bushes, leaving Charon and MacCready to pull something together. MacCready dug some bottles of beer out of the bag he was carrying, and then started going through Sloan's pack in search of food.   
  
“I wasn’t there when she cleared that settlement,” he told Charon, settling down on a fallen log with a packet of snack cakes. “Heard it was pretty intense, though. _Lots_ of ferals. And she’s pretty scared of ferals.” He wrinkled his nose, and looked down. "Not that I blame her."  
  
“I know she is,” Charon said, a small sour note creeping into his voice. He did not need this MacCready to tell him about the mistress. They had been travelling together for a month now; he knew her. He eyed the man, and leant back against the trunk of a tree. “How did you manage to be a Gunner without swearing?”  
  
MacCready gave him a stern look. “I’m not a Gunner any more.”  
  
“Why did you leave?”  
  
“Because I — Look, it’s not your business, okay? I didn’t want to be a Gunner any more.” He took off his hat, looking down at it as he held it in both hands. “Those guys were ass— they weren’t nice people. I like money, but I don’t like it _that_ much.”  
  
Charon grunted in agreement. “No. They are not nice people.”  
  
MacCready snorted. “Yeah. At least I could _leave_ , right? Must’ve sucked for you.”  
  
Charon ignored that. He did not want this man picking apart his existence. He sought for something else to say, something to distract MacCready from the subject.  
  
“Do you know about the vault?” he asked him. “I would like to understand what I am walking into.”  
  
MacCready looked up at him, then away, his lips parting.  
  
“Uh. Why don’t you ask Sloan?”  
  
“I cannot. She told me not to ask her about the vault.” She had also told him to disregard the order, but it had still been a _request,_ and he had upset her the first time he had mentioned it. She was a patient woman, but this was a subject on which her temper was quick and he had no desire to push her on it.  
  
“…Oh.” MacCready sighed, and put his hat back on his head. “Well… If it helps, I’m pretty sure the only thing you’ll find alive down there is radroaches. I haven’t been down there, so I can’t really tell you much, but… Just watch out for her, okay? That place is full of bad memories for her.”  
  
Charon scowled.   
  
“I am not her _therapist,_ ” he said, with an edge to his voice.  
  
MacCready rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever. Let her lose her mind.”  
  
Charon grumbled to himself. _This_ was why he did not commonly engage in conversation with his employers' associates. He ran the risk of annoying them, of causing offence, and _that_ annoyed the employer. He would try to change the subject.  
  
“You are human,” he said, choosing something that he had been wondering about all night. “Does it not bother you that she is with that ghoul?”  
  
MacCready looked surprised. “Who, _Hancock?_ Are you serious?”   
  
Charon raised a hairless eyebrow. “Did you not know?”  
  
MacCready let out a bark of laughter, and looked at him as if he was mad.  
  
“Of course I _knew._ But I don’t really know what you’re asking. It’s _Hancock_. I mean, are we talking about the same guy here? Mayor Hancock? The man who made Goodneighbor what it is today?” He made a quiet scoffing sound. “I mean, are you asking if I’m jealous? A little, I not gonna lie. But come on, nothing was going to happen there.” He tilted his head to one side, looking off into the middle distance. “That was really just sort of a wham, bam, thank-you-sir situation. You know how it is… few drinks, more than a few chems… and he’s hard man to say no to, not that I would have, even if I was sober... It was a good time, but you just know when something’s never going to happen again, right? Anyway, he’s a little too intense for me — well, a _lot_ too intense for me. I don’t think he knew what he was looking for until he found it. I’m happy for them. They’re good together.”  
  
Charon’s face had contorted into an expression somewhere between shock and disgust. He ground his teeth, and decided it was probably better to just stop talking to this man altogether. The robot seemed to be the only person Sloan knew with any damn sense.  
  
“I mean…” MacCready’s eyes were still focused somewhere in the middle distance, a confused, dreamy expression on his face, “…I didn’t even know you could _do_ that with a mutfruit.”  
  
Sloan tramped her way back through the dry grass, and Charon sent up several silent prayers of thanks as she sat herself down beside MacCready.   
  
“We’re drinking the beer I so carefully scavenged?” she chuckled, snagging herself a bottle.  
  
“Less for me to carry,” he said with a grin. He picked a bottle off the ground, and tossed it to Charon. “Heads up, big guy!”  
  
“He’s pretty good, huh?” Sloan said, knocking her shoulder gently against MacCready’s and looking up at Charon with an affectionate smile.   
  
“He’s scary, is what he is. Glad he’s on our side.”  
  
“I am on _her_ side,” Charon corrected him.   
  
MacCready grinned at him and popped the cap off his bottle.   
  
“It sounds like a pretty easy job to start off with, huh?” he said. “Some wilting vault-dweller turns up and you think you’ve got yourself a meal ticket. Escort her around Boston, back and forth from Diamond City or something. Easy. Then she starts dragging you into unstable high-rises infested with super-mutants.”  
  
Charon had to smirk at that. “She took me off a group of Gunners,” he reminded him. “I did not think she was helpless.”  
  
She snickered. “You should have seen me back then. I had _no_ idea what I was doing. Admit it, MacCready, I _was_ pretty helpless.”  
  
“Uh huh.” He rolled his eyes. “Almost as good a shot as I am, ‘helpless’, right.”   
  
“I was scared! It was scary!” She cackled to herself as she popped the cap from her beer. She pocketed the cap, gesturing expansively with her bottle. “Big green monsters with gibbets full of _mysterious flesh_.” She made a face, and took a mouthful of beer. “Fucking piles of gore all over the place. It was disturbing!”  
  
“I mean, I get that,” MacCready said. “You crawl out of a hole in the ground, the world’s pretty scary. But you deal with fear by slow exposure, not by pumping yourself full of psycho and throwing yourself at it, _Sloan_.” He met Charon’s eyes. “Am I right? Help me out here.”  
  
“It’s called flooding! It’s a legitimate psychological technique!”  
  
“I do not care if you use psycho,” Charon told her with a shrug, “so long as you warn me first, and attempt to restrain yourself from unnecessary risks. Psycho has its advantages, but when you throw yourself into excessive danger…” he hesitated. “In those circumstances, the contract makes it difficult for me to fight well.”  
  
“What do you mean?” MacCready asked him, suddenly serious. He had cocked his head to one side, eyes sharp and curious.  
  
Charon pushed himself off the tree, and went to sit on a rock across from them. He set his beer on the ground and rubbed his palms together, gathering his thoughts.  
  
“I try to… to keep awareness when I fight,” he said. “There is a balance, between the contract’s control and my own. In a fight the contract heightens things. Senses. Focus, adrenaline. Things are sharper. It is a good thing. But if the employer’s safety is threatened too much the pressure to defend, protect, becomes too great. It’s like thinking through a fog. Sirens,” he tapped the heel of his hand against his temple, “in my head. I have to wrestle the contract for control. Sometimes the contract wins.”  
  
“And that’s a… bad thing, right?” MacCready took a mouthful of beer, and let the bottle dangle from his fingers.  
  
“Yes. The contract does not know that _you_ are on her side. If it decided you were a threat I would kill you and not know it until the fight was over.”  
  
“Eesh.” He made a face. “Okay, so a bad thing.”  
  
“I need to be able to think. The contract is not tactical. The risk of losing control is too great.”  
  
“You ever seen him go all Grognak the Barbarian?” MacCready shot a grin at Sloan.  
  
“No.” There was a sparkle to her eyes as she looked at him, and she tapped her fingernails against the neck of her beer bottle. “Can’t say I’m not _intrigued_ …”  
  
Charon grimaced. “I do not enjoy it.”  
  
“Okay. Then we’ll try to avoid it.”  
  
“By not running at Gunners in power armour?” he asked hopefully.  
  
She grinned. “No promises, but I’ll do my best.”  
  
They ate their Fancy Lad snack cakes and drank their beer, and Charon left the two humans to talk while he went down to look at the flooded village. There were planks and walkways between the buildings, and he climbed up to the rooftops, eyes peeled for movement. At last he saw what looked like a dead ghoul slumped over a car submerged in the river below, and kicked a loose stone down on top of it. He watched with mild interest as it woke and, groaning and hissing, navigated its way up to where Charon stood on the bridge between two buildings. He raised his shotgun as it reached him, and the force of the shot knocked the feral’s body back down into the water below.   
  
The splash woke more, dragging themselves out of the water or surfacing from behind ferns on the rooftops. Charon frowned to himself, and pulled his new combat rifle from across his back to pick the ferals off before they got too close. As the last one fell, he heard a shout from behind him.  
  
“Charon!”  
  
He slung his rifle across his back, and turned to see Sloan on the riverbank, her shotgun in her hands. He couldn’t make out the expression on her face from where he was standing, but there was a thin quality to her voice, a tension, that suggested she would like to leave, and quickly.   
  
When he drew close enough to see her face, it was lined with worry and stress. She was chewing on her bottom lip, her eyebrows knitting, and MacCready smirked at Charon from over her shoulder.  
  
“See? He’s fine!” he told her, giving her shoulder a gentle shove.   
  
“I _know_ that,” she said, exasperated. “I just — I fell off one of the planks and — and I had to get out of the water and they _swarmed_ and…” She trailed off, and shuddered.   
  
“Okay, but even if he _did_ fall off, he’s a _ghoul_ , the water won’t bother him. Besides, he’s too tall for them to drag him under.” MacCready grinned at him, and threw him a lazy salute. “I gotta get going. Nice meeting you, big guy,” he said. “I’ll see you ‘round.”   
  
He gave Sloan a hug, and a kiss on the cheek, and left them to make his way across the nearby bridge towards Boston.  
  
Sloan grabbed Charon’s arm, pulling him back away from the river, and he looked down at her in mild amusement.  
  
“They were only ferals,” he told her. “They were no threat. You did not have to come down to the river.”  
  
She released his arm, and rubbed at the tip of her nose.  
  
“I heard shots, I got worried,” she said. “If it was Gunners, I wouldn’t be worried.” She hesitated. “Well. Maybe _mildly_ anxious.”  
  
“You are small,” he said, following her as she led their way north. “I understand that they can knock you down, that they are stronger than you are. Some are radioactive enough to make you sick. But they are no threat to me.”  
  
“I’m not small!” she said, wrinkling her nose at him. “I’m five-seven, that’s tall for a woman!”  
  
“Small,” he said again, and she chuckled.   
  
“All right. I’m sorry I freaked out and overreacted.”  
  
He might have found it annoying, to have an employer misjudge his skill in such a way, but for some reason it was more gratifying than anything else.   
  
Without MacCready around to delay them, Sloan picked up the pace. She was keen to make up some lost ground and to get as far north as they could before nightfall. Charon was glad to be moving faster. Action was always preferable to inaction.   
  
And, he would have to admit, he was glad to see the back of MacCready. He wasn’t a _bad_ kid, necessarily, but he had taken Charon’s place at the mistress’s side, and that had… well, it had been an irritation. Now it was just the two of them again, himself and the mistress, as it should be.  
  
“I hope MacCready wasn’t too much of a bother,” she said after a while, smirking to herself. “I get that some people can find him annoying. You should see the longsuffering face Nick pulls every time they’re in the same room. I get it… He lies and he cheats and he steals. People don’t trust him. But he’s a good guy, underneath it all. And he’s trying to be better.”   
  
“You are different around him,” he said.  
  
“He reminds me of my brother,” she said with a far-away smile. “He taught me to pick locks, a long time ago. He’s dead now.”  
  
“You have lost a lot of people.”  
  
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together, and looked toward the northern horizon. “But I gained a lot of people, too. MacCready’s one of those people. Family.” She looked up at him, her eyebrows pinched together. “You’ve lived a long time,” she said. “You must have lost people too.”  
  
“No.”   
  
She watched him for a moment, and then sighed.  
  
“No. I guess not.”  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robert MacCready: certified Bad Influence
> 
> I really like the idea of SS having grown up with all these old satirical protest songs about nuclear war and now she finds them bitterly ironic yet wildly entertaining in a gallows humour kind of way, and it disturbs pretty much everyone else. 
> 
> This one, "20 Tons of TNT", is by Flanders and Swann. Check out their "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear", "The Gasman Cometh" and "The Hippopotamus Song". All classics.


	14. Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charon is deeply frustrated by his own unwelcome emotional reactions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Generally speaking I feel there has to be some sort of statute of limitations for spoilers. I mean, if a book's more than 60 years old, or something. Nevertheless.... Spoilers for Phantom of the Opera incoming.

They would have been hard pressed to make it all the way to her vault before nightfall, especially with the slow pace they had taken that morning. They made camp as soon as it became difficult to see. Dogmeat found them just as Sloan had their campfire going, a radstag fawn hanging from his mouth.   
  
After dinner Sloan settled down with a book, Charon’s cue to do as he wished until she crawled into her sleeping bag. He pulled himself to his feet, and left the safety of the fire to scout the area. To his surprise Dogmeat followed him, his eyes sharp and his ears pricking forward as they moved quietly through the brush. It was a good thing, to have a dog around at night. Good hearing, good sense of smell. An asset.   
  
They found nothing suggesting danger, and Charon made his way back to the fire, Dogmeat padding silently at his heels. The mistress was still reading, book open in her lap, her chin resting on one hand. When he drew close, he saw the sparkle of light on her cheeks and knew she had been crying. She snuffled to herself, and turned the page.  
  
He settled himself back beside the fire, his left profile to her. He heard her close her book, and looked over to find her studying him as if she had never truly seen him before. The missing skin on his cheeks, the hole where his nose used to be… It sparked an anger in him, and he picked up a stick to poke viciously at the fire. It let loose a puff of sparks that settled him, a little.  
  
“What are you reading?” he demanded of her. She was still watching him, scrutinising the ruin of his face.  
  
“Phantom of the Opera,” she said. She shifted in her seat, her eyes finally leaving his face to settle on the book in her lap. “I was just thinking… he looked so much like a ghoul. Like a dead man… no nose or ears, though his skin was tight and dry, not torn like a ghoul’s. It’s strange.”  
  
“The villain?”  
  
She chuckled wetly, and shook her head. “Yes, and no. It’s a romance — not that sort of romance, the other sort. A gothic romance. All deep underground caverns and candlelight and terror. You can’t really call him the villain, or the hero. He kills people and he kidnaps the girl and he holds the world hostage, but…” She sighed. “You’d have to read the book. I’m no good at explaining it. I was just thinking, though, how strange it was, that this man wrote about a character who looked so much like a ghoul, so long before ghouls existed.”  
  
“People were afraid of him? In the book.”  
  
“Yes. He wore a mask and lived in the caves beneath the opera house. People thought he was a ghost. They couldn’t stand to look at him.” She had looked away, but she seemed to realise he might take that the wrong way, and she met his eyes again. “It twisted him up, all the fear. It made him cruel. He fell in love with a young singer and gave her lessons from behind the mirror in her dressing room, so she never saw him. She thought he was her angel of music. His face was… but his _voice_ was beautiful, he was so intelligent, he had such _talent_. But no one ever knew, because they wouldn’t look at him. He wrote the world’s most powerful, sorrowful music and no one ever heard it. That’s the great tragedy of the book. All that beauty was lost because people could not see past his ugliness.”  
  
Charon looked into the flames.  
  
“And the singer?”  
  
“The singer…” She moved over to sit closer to him, and pulled her knees up to her chest. “She loved him too, in a way. She wore his ring. She pitied him, but she loved him for his music, for his skill. She saw how the world was cruel to him. But she feared him, too — that he would lock her away, that he might kill her. And she was in love with someone else, a nobleman. They were going to be married. The Ghost — Erik — he kidnapped her and took her to his rooms under the opera house, and made her choose between staying with him forever and blowing up the place. It would have killed them both, and hundreds of others. Thousands.”  
  
He could feel her eyes on his face.  
  
“She chose him. She couldn’t let all those people die. But he never expected her to truly stay. He thought she would kill herself, that she couldn’t bear to live with him and look at his face every day. He knew kidnapping her was wrong. He felt, somehow, like it was his only option. He’d gone too far, was too lost in her to know how to let her go. She was to be his dead bride. He expected her to kill herself, and he would have been happy just to love her corpse, to have her with him, to possess her, just for a moment. But she loved him. Her heart broke for him. She took his hand and kissed his forehead, and he let her go.”   
  
They sat, the crackle of the fire the only sound. Sloan reached down to scratch Dogmeat behind the ears, and then went to dig her bedroll out from her pack.   
  
When she had fallen asleep, Charon reached across the fire and picked up her book. Settling himself so that the low flames lit the pages, he turning to the place she had marked.  
  


  
 _"Yes, she was waiting for me ... waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride ... And, when I ... came forward, more timid than ... a little child, she did not run away ... no, no ... she stayed ... she waited for me ... I even believe ... that she put out her forehead ... a little  ... like a living bride ... And ... and ... I ... kissed her! ... I! ... I! ... And she did not die! ... Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead! ... You can't tell! ... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never ... let me kiss her ... She used to run away ... and throw me my mask! ... Nor any other woman ... ever, ever! ... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying ...  You're crying, too, daroga ... and she cried also ... the angel cried! ..._ _I felt her tears flow on my forehead ... on mine, mine! ... They were soft ... they were sweet! ... They trickled under my mask ... they mingled with my tears in my eyes ... yes ... they flowed between my lips ... Listen, daroga, listen to what I did ... I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears ... and she did not run away! ... And she did not die! ... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together!”_   
  
  
  
Charon shut the book, and for a moment he considered throwing it into the fire. But how would he explain that? ‘I read your book behind your back and it bothered me’?   
  
He placed it back beside her on the ground. She stirred, and he paused, watching her face. Sleeping, her face relaxed, she looked like one of the women on the old billboards. A classic beauty. Awake, she was animated, in a way those billboard beauties could never be. Asleep, she may as well be wearing a porcelain mask, her scar a crack along its surface. If not for that mark, he might have believed she was a figment from before the war. A model from an old magazine.  
  
He shook his head, and went back to sit on the other side of the embers.  
  
“What is a ‘daroga’?” he asked her the next morning.  
  
She paused in the act of rearranging the contents of her pack, and looked at him over the remains of their fire.  
  
“It’s a police officer,” she said at last. “A chief of a police station, something like that. Did you read my book?”  
  
Charon was focused on his gun, pulling the pieces apart so he could clean them in the early morning light.   
  
“I did. I should not have.”  
  
“No, it’s fine. I was going to return it to the library on our way back through the city, but you can read it. You should have said, if you wanted a book.” She returned to her task.   
  
“No.”  
  
She shrugged. “All right, then.”  
  
“I do not want to read it. I was… curious.” He glanced at her, then back at his gun. “It had upset you.”  
  
“Oh, I always cry at that part,” she said, as if it was of no consequence. “The first time I was in public, and I had to go and sit in a bathroom for a while and sob it out.” She laughed. “A woman came in and had no idea why I was crying, she gave me a hug and a handful of tissues and said ‘men are scum, honey’.” She hummed a little in amusement. “God, that was a long time ago. I wonder if she lived? If she had a spot in a vault lined up, or something, or if she was just obliterated like everyone else...”  
  
Charon ground his teeth.  
  
“You never ask me about before the war,” his mistress said, watching him.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not? Everyone else does. Even the old ghouls. My memory is fresher than theirs.”  
  
“Because you did not live before the war.” He clicked his shotgun back together, and glared at her across the campsite. “You could not have lived before the war. Only ghouls get that old. And you,” he let his eyes wander over her, “are too _perfect._ ”  
  
She stared at him for a long moment. “Did I seriously never…?”   
  
“Never what?”  
  
“I can’t believe I…” She shook her head. “The vaults… Have you ever been in a vault?”  
  
“A few. The people there were strange.”  
  
“Some of them were set up as experiments. To test how people lived, how they interacted under stress. There’s one under Boston; they set it up so the Overseer was the most incompetent jerk they could find. All these upper-class people were told the place would be extra luxurious, and instead it was tiny rooms, cramped, and the guy in charge was some blue-collar egomaniac who had no idea how to work with people. They wanted to see how the blue-bloods responded to that sort of thing. I don’t know what happened in the end, but there was no one in the vault when I went through.”  
  
“And your vault? What was your experiment?”  
  
She smiled at him.  
  
“You’ll see when we get there.”

 

 


	15. Vault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friend are you ready for some EMOTIONS because I have some emotions for you

Cryogenics. It had been fucking cryogenics.   
  
They had climbed to the vault from the west, avoiding the settlement to the south-east. He stood on the circle of steel as she hit the button in the guardhouse, then scuttled over to join him. They both stared into the distance as the elevator creaked to life, and began to descend.   
  
Charon looked up as the doors closed over them, the slice of blue sky growing smaller.   
  
“You should have seen it,” she said in a dreamy voice. “The mushroom cloud in the distance, the light…”  
  
The elevator settled on the ground, and she led the way down the steps, past the dusty bones of some long-dead engineer, and across the threshold of the vault.   
  
This place was nothing like the vaults he’d seen before. None of the colours, none of the light. It was dark, and gloomy, and industrial. No one had been meant to live here.  
  
 _There was nothing in the vault,_ he remembered her saying, anger flashing in her eyes.   
  
She paused at the inner doors, running her fingers along the railings. Her hands were shaking, just a little.  
  
“Mistress.” Charon moved a little closer. “The skeleton… no one moved the body. What _happened_ down here?”  
  
She looked up, and it took a while for her eyes to focus on him.  
  
“There was no one to move him,” she said. “The others killed him to get out, I think. They were supposed to wait for an all-clear and it never came. They ran out of food. Got desperate. I’ve wondered a few times whether or not… Maybe some of them lived, once they got out. Or maybe everything was still too irradiated and they all died. I took my pip-boy off him, you know. The man on the ground. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get out. I would have been stuck in here.” Her voice was flat, distant, but then she looked at him again and forced a smile. “Follow me.”  
  
His mistress led him through a door, and held her arm out to indicate rows of strange pods on either side of the room.  
  
“They brought us down here,” she said, “and we changed into our vault suits, and then they said to step into the decontamination chambers before we were led into the next part of the vault. We’d never seen the inside of a vault before, we didn’t know what they were meant to look like.” She paused in front of one of the chambers, peering through the window. When she moved on, Charon bent to look, and a pair of unseeing eyes stared back at him.  
   
He straightened in shock.   
  
“Mistress…”  
  
She looked back at him, and smiled.   
  
“Did you think I was crazy, the way I went on about the old world?” She paused in front of the pod at the end, the empty one with the open door. “I woke up, once. Years and years ago. Just for a few seconds. They woke us up to take my son, and then they left, and when they switched them back on my pod was the only one that didn’t fail.”   
  
“You were… You were _frozen_? For two hundred years? You… you _really_ lived before the bombs?” He peered into another of the little, iced-up windows.   
  
“Yes. These people were my neighbours. Over here...”   
  
She crossed the corridor to the pod opposite the one that had once been hers. When he came to stand beside her, she lifted a hand, and pressed the button to open the pod. There was a clunking sound as the door opened, and then a hiss as the stale air of the vault rushed in.  
  
“This,” she said, “is Nate.”  
  
Nate. The husband.   
  
The man had been handsome: thick black hair and a sharp jawline, stubble along his cheeks, broad shoulders and strong arms. A soldier. Yes, he could have seen her with him. They would have made a good match.   
  
Sloan stepped up on the base of the pod, and, gently, she bent to press a kiss against his frozen cheek.  
  
“I’m sorry, honey,” she sighed. “Shaun… We’ve lost Shaun. I did the best I could, but there’s no getting him back. I was just… too late.” She let her fingers trace along his arm. “I thought it was about time we found you a place to rest. It’s not right to leave you here in this shithole. Not that the rest of the world is much better… but I thought you’d rather sleep under the earth than stay here all frozen. At least you’ll be warm.” She straightened, and pulled something from around her neck. “I still have yours,” she said, slipping the ring from its chain and sliding it over his frozen finger. “You should have mine.”  
  
She stepped back, and wiped at her eyes with a sigh.  
  
“Come on,” she said to Charon. “Would you carry him? He’s too heavy for me.”   
  
It was strange, beyond strange, to follow her out of this place with the stiff, frozen man from out of time. She told him, as they went, about how she had woken, months ago, to a vault full of corpses and radroaches. She hadn’t like roaches even when they were small, and these ones had been bigger than her head. She had screamed and beaten them to death with a baton, and then had a panic attack in a corner until she forced herself to move on, taking everything she could, pulling the pip-boy off the last crumbling skeleton and then stepping into a changed world.  
  
As the elevator brought them back into the wasteland he imagined what it must have been like, to leave a world that was green and lush and safe, and find that while she had slept it had turned into something brown and broken and dangerous.   
  
Instead of going down, she led him further up the hill, to a small spot overlooking the old tumble-down ruins in which one or two people moved.   
  
“I was going to bury him near our house, but I really don’t want Codsworth to see him,” she sighed. “He’s unstable enough, for a robot. And we used to sit up here, when I was pregnant. It’s not a bad place to be buried. Stay here, with him. I’m going to grab some shovels.”  
  
They dug the hole together, the corpse slowly defrosting beside them.   
  
All this time — more than a month —  he had thought she was delusional. The army, law school, a world before the bombs… those had _actually happened._ They were real, not some story she had invented in her head. He found himself going back over everything she had said, every little aside about caps as a currency or the strangeness of the wasteland that he had written off as a vault-dweller idiosyncrasy at best and evidence of insanity at worst. And she _wasn’t_ a vault-dweller, not really. From her perspective, she had barely spent an hour down there. She had closed her eyes for a moment and opened them to find the world had ended. Two hundred and ten years. Fucking Sleeping Beauty, whose prince had never come.  
  
Whose prince had died, and was waiting to be buried. He flicked a glance at the corpse, and swallowed.  
  
“What happened to your son?” he asked eventually.   
  
She climbed up out of the hole and set her spade down, wiping the back of her wrist across her forehead.   
  
“Someone took him. Nate was holding him, in the pod, and he wouldn’t let him go. They shot him, and took Shaun. Agents from the Institute. I spent months trying to track him down.” She shook her head. “When I finally found him… he wasn’t my son any more.”  
  
Charon looked up at her, curious.  
  
“He was eighty years old,” she said. “Eighty years ago they took him. Eighty years —” She broke off, and took a deep breath. “That’s how long Nate’s been dead. That’s how long since all those other cryo pods failed. Eighty years I was _alone_ down there and I didn’t even know it. And my son… he was a _monster_. He was _running_ the Institute. They called him Father. He was kidnapping people, replacing them… He manipulated me. He wanted me to take over from him when he died.”  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
“I shot him,” she said, and pressed her lips together. “I blew the whole damn place into the sky.”  
  
“That… must have been hard.”  
  
She shook her head. “It was hard to learn who he was, what he had become. It was hard to know he’d lived his entire life while I was sleeping. It wasn’t hard to shoot him. He wasn’t my son any more. I lost my son the day they took him from the vault.”  
  
When the hole was deep enough, she sank down between the warming corpse of her late husband, tracing her fingers down his face, his arms, grasping his hands. Memorising him. She stared for so long Charon had to clear his throat, and she looked up at him, and nodded. He lowered the body into the hole, and they filled it together in silence.   
  
They wandered into the settlement afterwards. There were only a few people here: a man and his young daughter, a ghoul in a yellow hat who looked at his mistress like she was an angel from heaven, a scruffy bearded man with a toothless smile. There was a Mr Handy, too, who sputtered at his mistress to take care of herself and hovered until she shooed him away. Then he rushed off, muttering about dusting.  
  
“Codsworth has a couple of screws loose,” Sloan told him, pushing open the door to a blue house. “He tried to hold things together after the bombs, but two hundred years of trying to polish rust kind of fried his circuits. He keeps things straight around here, and the others aren’t really fighters, although the Vault-tec guy must know how to take care of himself, if he’s lived this long. I knew him, kind of, before the War. The Vault-tec guy, I mean. He… he came to tell us we were on the list. It was only a few minutes later that the sirens started. They wouldn’t let him into the vault. I thought the guards were going to shoot him, and then the bombs…” She stopped in the middle of the room, and gestured to the walls. “I lived here.”  
  
She kept things here, in a large locked trunk, and there was a bed, and a sofa in what had been her living room, but nearly all the other furniture had gone. Too damaged to be saved, or other people had more need of it than she did. She still walked into every room, trailing her fingers along the ruined walls, pausing a long time in one bedroom, and she stared at the mirror in the bathroom as if she could see something where the glass used to be. Then she went into the bedroom she had shared with her husband, and sat on the bed, and began to cry.  
  
He left her to her private grief. The sun was low in the sky by the time she came out, her face fresher than he had expected.   
  
They did not linger. She traded a few things with the settlers, and then they left, walking south until the sky darkened and they set up camp in a waystation beside the railroad track.  
  
“Did you really think I was mad?” she asked him with a smile on her face.   
  
He nodded. “I’ve had crazy employers before. You were sane enough most of the time. But it was… unsettling.”  
  
It was even more unsettling now, somehow. He was sitting in the lantern-light with a pre-war human, something he had only ever seen before in pictures, as far as he knew. She was unique, a survivor; a woman out of time. A precious thing. Her mannerisms, the way she moved, her flashes of anger at the state of the world all made sense now. Her strange behaviour towards ghouls, even…  
  
“Is that why you like ghouls?” he asked her. “You can talk about the time before the war?”  
  
“It’s not the only reason,” she said, stretching out her legs luxuriously. “It’s nice, though. No one else gets my pop culture references. I think some of them hate me, for being… not like them.”  
  
“Some ghouls hate _all_ smoothskins for being not like them,” Charon grunted.   
  
“Do you?” she asked.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Did you once?”  
  
Charon shook his head. “I have different reasons for hating,” he said, leaning back against the station wall. “Mine aren’t specific to smoothskins.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
He exhaled through the hole where his nose had been, and looked through the window at the stars.  
  
“They all have a freedom I do not, and they use it to steal and rape and kill. Or they sit behind their walls and do nothing at all until they die.”  
  
“What would you do?”   
  
He looked at her, and saw she had narrowed her eyes a little, like a cat that was content.  
  
Charon spread his hands.  
  
“I am not free.”  
  
“No. But if you were.”  
  
He shrugged. “I am not free. I am… I do not know what I would do.”  
  
“Say you were free now. This moment. Say you had to make a choice. You could walk out of this room right now, travel clear across the world, do anything, see everything, sleep with whoever you wanted. The world is your oyster. What would you do? Where would you go?”   
  
He growled, rubbing his palms on his trousers.  
  
“Why are you pushing me on this? _I don’t know._ ”  
  
She was silent, for a moment. He didn’t look at her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t always know where the lines are, with you.”  
  
“Why do you ask me these questions?”  
  
“I’m curious. I —”  
  
“How am I supposed to answer something like that? How?” he demanded, voice tight with agitation, and met her eyes for a just a moment before he looked away. “I don’t know! I don’t let myself think like that because where the fuck does it get me? I will _never_ be free. I’m not going to spend my centuries dreaming about what I can _never have_. I don’t think about where I would go or what I would do or who I would fuck. Why would I torture myself?”  
  
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”  
  
Her voice was damp, heavy, and it surprised him. He looked up just in time to see her slip down the steps and into the night.  
  
He sat, suspended, as his blood thrummed with adrenaline, torn between anger, frustration and the contract-fuelled knowledge that _the mistress was out there in the night in the dark in the danger **by herself**_ **.** She would come back, of course she would come back, all her things were here, and _he_ was here, and she had a gun, so why would he worry? Why should he go out there and look for her? She was probably sitting at the base of the stairs and crying to herself, which she’d done far too much of the past week or so, over ducks and books and dead husbands. He didn’t need to go out there just to watch her cry.  
  
Charon sat a minute, perhaps two, before the contract’s niggling anxiety got the better of him and he sighed, and checked his gun, and followed her out into the night.  
  
She wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, and that gave him pause. A lamp hung from the waystation, providing just enough light to cast heavy shadows, and not enough to make out any details in the night. He couldn’t see the green glow of the mistress’s pip-boy light anywhere.   
  
_Fuck._   
  
He spun slowly, looking for any indication of the direction in which she might have gone, eyes searching the darkness for the faintest hint of green light. Nothing. He’d have to stay here and wait; the only alternative was to pick a direction, and he’d never find her that way. He made a pass around the waystation, peering out into the night, and then with a grimace returned to the stairs.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
He jolted, and turned to see her standing on the railroad tracks as if she’d been there the whole time.   
  
“Don’t _do_ that,” he said. If she’d been anyone else he’d have taken her by the shoulders and shaken her, but that was too much like violence, the contract wouldn’t allow it, so he just scowled at her and hoped she could see it in the dark.   
  
“I’m —”  
  
“That’s four times in the past five minutes, smoothskin, stop it.”  
  
He could hear the silent fifth in her head all the same.  
  
“Are you okay?” she asked him. “You look…”  
  
He deflated with a sigh. “I thought I’d lost you. Lost track of you. Couldn’t see where you went.”  
  
“I just needed some air.” She drew a little closer, one elbow cradled in the opposite hand. “You were right. Those were stupid, thoughtless questions.”  
  
She looked away, and she seemed very small to him, then. Fragile, though he knew damn well she was surprisingly tough, for a human.  
  
“You are in charge of me,” he reminded her. “You do not need to _cry_. If I frighten you, mistress, just order me to stop.”  
  
“You didn’t frighten me.”  
  
“I did. You ran off.”  
  
“No, it’s…” She spread her arms, letting them fall to slap against her thighs. “I forget. I mean you know things about me now, and I want to know you, I want to dig into your head and understand you like the others, and I think just because I try not to treat you like trash… Like there won’t be centuries of people after me, like — _god_.” She raked her hands back through her hair. “I’m not making any sense. The thing is, I like to think we’re friends, Charon, I feel like we are. The contract’s become like… like some _token_ to me, something I found in the wasteland and something that’s _important_ , precious, something that has repercussions, but still it’s just a thing. But for you it’s your whole _world_. It’s your past and your future and it governs everything you do. And I forget that. I forget that just because you’re mine _now_ doesn’t mean you will be forever, that you’ll go on after me and I’ll just be some blip in your past, some aberration, and maybe you don’t think about the past ever, if you can help it, maybe when I’m gone you’ll never think of me. And I’m not asking you to. I just forget those things, and I shouldn’t. I like to get to know people, I like it when there’s trust between us but there’s too much you won’t or can’t remember, and… and if I dig into your head and open you up you’ll just have to close yourself off again when I’m gone. That’s no kindness. None of this is kindness.”  
  
She stood looking at the ground as if there was anything he could say to any of that. He had reached out a hand halfway through her tirade only to let it drop, helpless, because how the hell could he touch her, how — why was she — and then she called him _hers_ and that _pained_ him because didn’t she just say they were friends? Who calls someone a friend and then calls them their property?  
  
“I am not yours,” he croaked, and licked ruined lips that felt suddenly too dry. It was an old refrain and one he knew was arguable at best, but this was something he clung to, something he would not let employers forget. “You own the contract, mistress, you do not own me.”  
  
She looked up at him, and even in the darkness he could see the surprise on her face. “I never said I owned you.” Her expression changed, slowly, as some kind of understanding stole over her. “Oh. I see. You... You think…” She swallowed. “I never said I owned you, Charon. I said — I said you were mine. You belong to me.”  
  
“Semantics. You own your gun; it belongs to you. It is the same thing.”  
  
She shook her head. “It’s not. I — I didn’t mean it that way. If you _were_ a slave, I would own you. But if I did own you, you would _never_ belong to me. Those employers you hated… you didn’t belong to them. You know that. They couldn’t touch you.”  
  
“You’re full of shit,” he said, blunt, knowing it might sting. “They couldn’t _touch_ me? Of course they could. The contract forbids physical violence on the part of the contract holder. That’s _it_.”  
  
She was still shaking her head. “Only the outside. They couldn’t touch _you_. Wasn’t there some place you went in your head, when — ” He saw her eyes widen as she cut herself off, backing away from that cliff edge. He felt a little gratitude flare in his chest. Of course she’d recognise that, of course she’d avoid a subject she knew would pull up too many old ghosts.   
  
She dropped her head, and it was a long time before she managed to lift it again and tilt it up to study his face, lamplight shining on her eyes. “You know me by now, Charon. You think I meant I owned you?” He said nothing. “There’s no emotion in ownership. It’s cold. Ownership goes one way; it’s predatory. But belonging goes both ways. Belonging to someone necessitates them belonging to you. You can’t separate the two. I belonged to Nate, and Nate belonged to me. We _belonged._ With places, too… A lot of the time you can’t own a place. You can own a building, or a business, but not a beach, a mountaintop, a city. A place is something that goes both ways. Goodneighbor belongs to Hancock, but Hancock also belongs to Goodneighbor.”  
  
“So _you_ belong to _me_?” He raised a hairless brow with a sneer.  
  
“Of course.” She gave him a wry smile. “Or don’t you want me?” When he didn’t reply, she hesitated, and said “You know, any time you want, if you’re not happy, Charon, I can — I can sell your contract, if you want me to. If at any point you’re done and you want to move on, if at any point you’re not happy with me, or if there’s someone else you’d rather…”  
  
He exhaled, and stepped forward to rest his hand on her hair, and for half a moment he marvelled at its softness before he found his voice.   
  
“You do just fine, smoothskin.”  
  
She’d flinched, but it was the weight of his hand, he thought, and the unexpectedness of the gesture, because the relief that shone on her face when she looked up at him made his chest swell.   
  
It was gratifying. Charon thought of himself as competent; the contract demanded his action, but his skill was his own. He knew many employers had valued his service, but this was beyond appreciation of his skill. She did not just value his service, she valued _him_. She had _affection_ for him. They were _friends_. There had never been anyone who actually wanted him around before, really _wanted_ him, not just tolerated him because of the job he performed.  
  
She took his hand from her head, clutching it between both of hers, and he was happy to stand here with his skin pressed against the warm leather of her gloves. But then she raised his hand to press her lips against his knuckles, and his stomach clenched.   
  
She felt the change in him, somehow. She released his hand just as he was about to pull it away, a guilty look on her face.  
  
“Sorry. That’s the line, huh?”  
  
He didn’t know how to respond to that. He felt a tug, a connection between them, so like the contract and yet so different. He did not mind being close to her, would not mind being closer still. The softness of her lips against his ruined flesh had been too much, too much, but her small hand in his, yes, he did not mind that.  
  
Cautiously, he stepped forward, close to her, and reached out to take her hand. She allowed it, watching him with those curious eyes of hers, as he raised her hand in both of his, as she had done, only the tips of her fingers free from the leather of her glove.  
  
“Mistress.”  
  
“Charon.”  
  
He hesitated. “I have never _belonged_ before.”  
  
She smiled. “You do just fine.”  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yayyy I'm so happy, I love this chapter and I've been waiting to post it for FOREVER
> 
> *confetti*


	16. Theatre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why can't anyone in the Commonwealth take "no" for a goddamn answer?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of a handful of chapters that includes an in-game scene. In these cases I try to keep the bulk of the original dialogue and expand on it where I can rather than re-write the whole scene from scratch.

“You have to approach Goodneighbor from the north or the west,” she was saying.   
  
They had made good time through the Commonwealth, passing by Diamond City and skirting Swan’s Pond. Sloan had swerved south after that, winding through alleys and pointing out landmarks she barely knew herself. This part of Boston was a warren of raider barricades. Not nearly as bad as DC, with its great walls of fallen buildings, but still not a simple place to navigate.  
  
“North or west it’s easy, just follow the roads, turn a corner and bam, Goodneighbor. But you can’t reach it from the south or east. It took me _forever_ to find the door the first time. Someone had marked it on my pip-boy and I kept circling the walls trying to figure out how to get in, dodging wild dogs and super mutants. North or west, for Goodneighbor.”   
  
Charon’s eye caught on the fifth white painted arrow he had seen since she started leading them down these alleyways.   
  
“Where do these go?” he asked, nodding towards one.   
  
“I don’t know,” she said, stopping. “There’s a list of rules spray-painted on a wall somewhere. _No fighting outside the cage, rule-breakers will be shot_ , something like that. I assumed it was raiders and avoided the place. You just know it’s trouble when someone writes their name all over everything. Didn’t want to go in without back-up. Organised raiders can be tricky.”  
  
“You have back-up now,” he pointed out.  
  
She smirked. “So I do.”  
  
It felt good to be hunting with her again. There was a new spark of camaraderie between them, as they followed the white arrows, and she seemed to notice it too. She kept catching his eye, and grinning.  
  
“It’s been too long since we had a good bandit raid,” she told him.   
  
 “A couple of weeks, maybe,” he said.   
  
“That’s _forever_ in post-apocalyptic time.”  
  
They found what they were looking for before too long: an old theatre, its marquee displaying the name _Combat Zone_. Definitely the sort of place one would find raiders. They met each other’s eyes, and checked their weapons. Then the mistress took point, and Charon kicked open the doors.  
  
The theatre had been transformed into some sort of fighting attraction, like an old-world boxing match.There was a cage up front on the stage, and shops and sundries constructed throughout the audience. They were hung with lights, stocked with booze and chems. But the backdrop was what made the place: the great velvet curtains had survived, deep rich red and falling in heavy swooping folds.   
  
“Ooohhh.” The mistress’s eyes shone.   
  
Charon was definitely getting a feel for what made her heart sing, and this was it: neon lights, tommy guns, speakeasies, and old-world decadence; this old theatre with its patched-together, underground, half-way criminal enterprise was right up her alleyway.   
  
The raiders brought down the tone of the place, though. Sloan caught the eye of a man tied up at the entrance under yet another list of the rules, and nudged Charon.  
  
“I don’t know whether to shoot them or free them,” she admitted in a hushed voice. “I don’t like the idea of people tied up like that, but they’re raiders, and raiders tend to do worse. At least they’re not hanging from a hook.”  
  
They left the prisoners behind, walking through into the theatre with their guns in hand. A ghoul at the stage was announcing the winner of a fight, and when he saw them enter he raised his head as if spotting a new contender.  
  
“And who’s this?” he said, and the raiders turned.  
  
For a moment, Charon thought they might be welcomed as part of the audience, but Sloan was clearly not a stranger to these raiders. There was a chorus of _“Jesus fuck, what’s that bitch doing here?”_ and the audience disappeared behind chairs and tables.  
  
“God damn it, one day I’d just like to watch a show.” She rolled her eyes and shot him a grin as she darted for cover.  
  
They split up. He took out some of the raiders on the bottom level and flanked those on the ramps leading up above, so that she could vault over their corpses and clean house up top. From her vantage point she could easily pop the stragglers that he couldn’t reach, crouching behind their upturned tables and makeshift cover. It was over far too quickly. Almost disappointing.  
  
The ghoul and the slip of a thing that had been crowned the winner of some unseen fight — presumably against her own shadow — were cowering in the corner of the cage. Sloan sauntered in with her rifle settled in her hands, and Charon followed a step behind, his shotgun barrel resting on his shoulder.  
  
“We were rooting for you the whole time,” the man said, and Charon narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t quite work out if he was being sarcastic, or if he just didn’t want to end up like the raiders.  
  
“Hello,” the mistress said. “Sorry about the mess.”  
  
“It could have gone worse,” he said, rising from his crouch and brushing himself off.  
  
“Seemed quite the performance from where I was standing,” the girl piped up in a thick Irish accent. She was, now Charon got a close look at her, a very attractive woman. Not, naturally, as attractive as the mistress, but who was? She was still damned good-looking for a woman who seemed to take punches for a living.  
  
“Are you fucking high or something?” the man snapped at her. “What am I saying, of course you are.”  
  
“I won the fight, didn’t I?”  
  
“You’re strung out and getting sloppy.” He sighed, and looked Sloan up and down. “I’m not sure if I should kiss you, or have my little bird here peck out your entrails.”  
  
Charon took a menacing step forward, lifting his shotgun from his shoulder. “Try either,” he growled, “and see where it gets you.”  
  
Sloan grinned. Charon glanced at her and felt a warmth stir in his belly at the thrilled expression on her face. Always satisfying to have one’s work be valued.   
  
“Nice place you have here,” she was saying to the man, her eyes wandering over the ancient curtains.   
  
“This is the Combat Zone,” he said, as if it wasn’t written on the door. “Finest arena in the Commonwealth. Cait here’s the headliner. A hundred-plus matches, undefeated.”  
  
Sloan exchanged a look with Charon, and he had to fight a smile. It was clear she was not particularly impressed.  
  
“Couple years ago a gang of raiders rolled in and we started serving a more… exclusive clientele,” the man was saying. “Up until you took our entire client base out of the gene pool and put us out of business, that is.”  
  
Sloan gave him a smile, lifting the end of her rifle just slightly. “Oh, well I’m just so awfully sorry, Tommy. Is it Tommy? That’s the name all over the place.”  
  
He gave her a cautious nod. “Yeah… yeah. Tommy Loneghan.”  
  
“So _nice_ to meet you, Tommy. My name’s Sloan. You’ll notice I just saved your hides.”  
  
Charon grinned. He had never seen his mistress truly _annoyed_ before, at least not with anyone not actively trying to kill her. Usually she did her best to help people, and they were genuinely grateful for the help. This sweetly sarcastic Sloan was unnerving, and he liked it.  
  
“Keeping those idiots entertained was what kept the lights on,” Tommy was saying. “Not exactly sure what we’re gonna do now.”  
  
“To hell with ‘em. More’ll come,” the woman said. There was something off about her. Too many years under other people’s fists, if Charon had to guess. “I just need quick a breather and I’ll be ready to go.”  
  
“A breather? What? So you can shove more of that junk into your arm?”  
  
Charon exchanged glances with his mistress again. She rolled her eyes. Amusement seemed to be winning out over irritation.  
  
“No, no,” Tommy was saying. “You know what? I think this was a blessing in disguise.” He eyed Sloan, tapping a finger thoughtfully against his scarred chin. “You caught the end of that bout. What you think of Cait’s work?”  
  
She shrugged. “I’ve seen better.”  
  
“Like hell you have!” Cait snapped.  
  
Tommy waved a placating hand. “See, here’s my predicament. I suddenly got no audience. No audience means I got no caps coming in. And if you ain’t bringing in caps, little bird,” he said to the woman, “you ain’t an asset. You’re a liability. So, here’s what I’m thinking.” He gave Sloan a tight smile. “What say I let you take over her contract?”  
  
Sloan visibly started, her mouth falling open.  
  
Tommy didn’t seem to notice. “She goes with you, watches your back… Look, you’d be doing me a favour while I try to get the place back in order. What do you say?”  
  
“Oooooh, no.” She sliced a hand through the air in a gesture that brooked no argument. “Nooooo, no no no no. Abso _lute_ ly not. No. Hell no. Nope. Absolutely. Fucking. Not.”  
  
The man stared at her, and Charon had to bite his tongue to keep himself from laughing.   
  
“Look —” Tommy started to say.  
  
“Don’t _even_ try it. You think I need her watching my back? I have _him!_ ” She jabbed her thumb back over her shoulder in Charon’s direction. “One bodyguard with a haunted contract who has to obey my every command is, frankly, all I am equipped to handle. You can keep your _own_ unstable killing machine, and I’ll keep mine, okay?”  
  
Charon chuckled. “Smoothskin,” he said, “he doesn’t mean that sort of contract.”  
  
She looked up at him, her mouth hanging open. Realisation dawned. “Oh. Well, whatever, one contract is enough. Not interested, Tommy, thank you.”  
  
Tommy gave Charon a uneasy look, but forced a grin.  
  
“Hmm, shame. I usually got a good sense for match-ups. How about we say you’ll think about it?”  
  
Sloan’s hands tightened on her rifle, and a muscle jumped in her jaw. “Are you serious? The fuck is wrong with you? Was ‘no no no no, absolutely not’ a bit too unclear for you?”  
  
Charon put his hand on her shoulder, and pulled her back a step. One too many hits of jet in the past few hours, he guessed.   
  
“Come on, smoothskin. Let’s go before you get it into your head to do something you might regret.”  
  
“Maybe I _want_ to do something I might regret,” she scowled, but she followed him out of the place anyway. She turned at the door, and looked back across the empty theatre. “I coulda liked this place! You an’ me, Tommy, we coulda _been_ something! I coulda brought you all these clients from Goodneighbor! That’s what you get for not taking no for a _fucking answer!_ ”  
  
Charon grabbed her arm, and dragged her back through the doors.  
  
“No means no, asshole!” she yelled as the doors closed behind them. “God damnit.” She sighed, and looked up at the theatre marquee.   
  
After a while, when she had not torn her eyes away from the building, Charon nudged at her shoulder. “Sloan?”  
  
She shook her head. “Just thinking old thoughts.” She gestured to the theatre doors. “We used to come here, sometimes. Alex — my boss — he’d buy season tickets, and sometimes they’d invite us along, or he and his wife couldn’t make it so he’d give the tickets to us, and — anyway. It’s a beautiful building. It’d be nice to get it running again, one way or another.” She gave it another glance-over, and sighed. “I feel a little bad for trashing it.”  
  
“They will rebuild.”  
  
“What the hell was _their_ deal, anyway? Think they’re fucking?”  
  
Charon’s lip curled. “I hope not.”  
  
Sloan laughed. “You and your sensitivities. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my pet peeves re: Fallout 4 is that you can only very rarely choose not to do something. They always leave the door open for you. Like, no, I seriously do not want to be your General. Be your own goddamn General. I was just doing some odd jobs to help out! Stop making me your boss! aaaaand that's why I just sort of cut through Concord, grab the bobblehead and make myself scarce these days >.>
> 
> I do like Cait and Tommy. Maybe we'll see them again.


	17. Songs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filling in for Magnolia.

She had led him south, chewing on her bottom lip. Three times she had had to backtrack, once due to a Gunner encampment and twice because of a dead end. Charon was beginning to think she had gotten them both lost and was going to suggest he climb up a nearby fire escape to get their bearings when she tugged at his arm and pointed.  
  
There was a ghoul at the end of the street, sitting on a dirty red sofa, and she waved to him as she trotted along the road.  
  
“Hey, Slim!”  
  
“Well, if it isn’t the kid who tried to blow my head off.” The ghoul looked her up and down with an appraising eye, and smiled. “You look like you’ve gotten the hang of the place.”  
  
“Sure have.” She grinned at him. “Slim, this is Charon.”   
  
He saw the ghoul’s eyes widen. A familiar sort of stiffness settled over Slim’s features as their gazes met, and Charon felt a weight in his gut. This man had heard of him. News travelled slow between ghoul settlements, but it travelled _far_.  
  
Sloan was smiling up at him, unaware, her eyes sparkling. “Charon, this is Slim. He’s the first ghoul I ever met that wasn’t trying to gnaw my face off. I was a _total_ ass and he still sold me some stimpaks. He’s a good guy.” She turned back to Slim, and almost did a double-take at the expression on his face. “You all right, Slim?”  
  
Slim eyed her nervously, and nodded towards Charon. “You know who this guy is, kid?”  
  
She blinked at him. “I think I have a fairly good idea at this point, yes.”  
  
“He used to work for Ahzrukhal.”  
  
She wrinkled her nose, and shrugged a shoulder. “Well, now he works for me.”  
  
Slim’s eyes darted from Charon to her, and back again. He was clearly agitated.  
  
Charon sighed.  
  
“She doesn’t know who that is,” he told him. “She holds my contract now. She has nothing to fear from me. Nor do you, so long as you stay on her good side. And for what it’s worth, I blew Ahzrukhal’s head off his shoulders ten years ago.”  
  
“Oh.” He hesitated. “Well… good. So, uh, kid, you here for some chems?”  
  
She bartered for some addictol, something she liked to keep around just in case, and traded him some of her surplus jet. She offered him some rum from a half-empty bottle in her pack and they chatted for a while on the man’s old red couch, catching up on her adventures since the time when, barely out of the vault, she had stumbled on him in the darkness. The sun had sunk low in the sky when they left him behind. She wanted to make Goodneighbor before nightfall.   
  
“Should I know who Ahzrukhal is?” she asked him as they wound their way through the ruins.  
  
Charon shrugged. “An old employer. He was an evil bastard.”  
  
“A bad employer?”   
  
“Yes.” Charon sought out scraps of sky between the buildings. The sun was starting to paint it in pinks and oranges. “Not the worst, but he was in the running.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“He ran a bar in a ghoul settlement in D.C. This kid came along. A vault-dweller, actually. Like you. Only not like you. He’d grown up in the vault. He was… strange. Ahzrukhal was running out of mind-numbing tasks for me to do, and a couple thousand caps must have sounded like a good deal at the time.”   
  
“Wait, you told me about this, ages ago. The last guy who sold you. You told me you killed him.”  
  
“I did. Ahzrukhal hadn’t really thought that through.”  
  
She was looking up at him with a question on her face, and he sighed.  
  
“I hated that slimy bastard. I’d wanted him dead for years. Decades. As soon as the contract left his hands I was free to kill him. I blew his brains over the back wall and then I shot him again just to make sure.”  
  
She drifted a little closer to him, and slipped her hand into his. He looked down at her, curious, but she seemed only pensive, a faint line creasing the skin between her brows.   
  
“You’re not going to kill _me_ , eventually, are you?”  
  
“No,” he huffed a laugh. “Not unless you turn into someone else, someone I learn to hate. Planning on selling my contract, smoothskin?”  
  
“I was not,” she said. “Just making sure.” She was smirking to herself. “What was the vault-dweller like? Was he a good employer?”  
  
Charon hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “One of the better ones. They called him the Lone Wanderer. He spent a lot of time hiking back and forth across the Capital Wasteland by himself, I guess. He was barely more than a kid.” He sighed, and tried to marshal his memories of him into something coherent. “He did things with high ideas of being noble, but he did not think them through. He was not good at anticipating the result of an order.”  
  
“…Oh.” Her hand tightened around his. “That’s… I was going to say it was almost worse, because you can’t hate someone for giving a bad order with the best of intentions, but…”  
  
“You can try. I resented him for years afterwards.” He pulled his hand away. “He sent me off to find _an employer worthy of me_ ,” he spat it out, “without thinking what that would mean. I walked for _weeks_. He could have just picked someone he liked and sold my contract but he didn’t, so I walked until he died and then gave my contract to the first cunt I happened to stumble across.”  
  
“He was trying to do right by you.”  
  
“I know that. He did a bad fucking job.” His cheek twitched. “He was a good employer. It was good to work for him. He threw me away.” He could sense another question from her, and he grimaced. “Do not pry on this, mistress. Please.”  
  
“Okay.” She still looked pensive, but she left it alone.  
  
They had to circle around to find the way back to Goodneighbor. She pointed out the walls as they passed; it _looked_ easy enough to find the entrance, but as they circled the place Charon realised why it had given her so much trouble the first time she had come here. Once she had found the north road, however, things were much easier. They turned the corner, and there it was.  
  
As before, she relaxed instantly upon seeing the neon sign with its great flickering arrow.  
  
“You don’t do that with Diamond City,” he said, watching her as she led the way to the door.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Relax. Not even in your own house. But you do here.”  
  
She shrugged, and pushed open the door. “First time I went to Diamond City people gave me suspicious looks. I don’t _blame_ ‘em, I mean, the Commonwealth’s a tough place, but still, I didn’t exactly feel at home. But the first time I came to Goodneighbor, the guy who tried to fleece me got a talking to for being impolite. I was a lost idiot fresh out of the vault, but everyone here called me sister. Of the people, for the people. Goodneighbor is _home_. A refuge for the lost.”  
  
“You trust the people too much,” Charon said, his mouth twisting into a frown as he looked around the square. “No place is truly safe.”  
  
“No, but it’s as safe as it can be. Hancock looks out for them, and if you mind your own business, no one will give you trouble.” She turned and looked at him, her lips twisting in a wry smile as she folded her arms. “Now, can I trust you not to start another bar fight if I leave you on your own?”  
  
Charon almost winced.  
  
“Yes, mistress.”  
  
“Good. You still have those caps I gave you, right? Go enjoy yourself. I’ll be down in the Third Rail in an hour, if you think you can bear my singing.”  
  
He went to the Hotel Rexford first, to dump his pack and the heavier bits of his armour. The woman behind the counter was short-tempered, but looked him in the eye when she told him Sloan’s room was already paid up, top floor, end of the hall on the right. That, at least, was one thing he liked about this town. The smoothskins looked you in the face, however horrific it was.  
  
Her room looked untouched since the last time they had been here, and he wondered whether she’d bought it outright. He put his pack on the dresser, and set about unbuckling his spaulders and the heavy leather-lined steel he wore across his chest. He stretched out on the bed for a while, letting his mind wander.   
  
She would wear _the dress_. He allowed himself a smile. Oh, he was in trouble, he knew. There had been few and fewer employers whom he had found attractive, and that attraction never lasted. The role of employer was always paramount, powerful, overshadowing everything else. But he was in Goodneighbor, and every man was free in Goodneighbor. Not truly free, of course, and after the last time he would have to watch himself more carefully, but the chains were slack and he would allow himself to indulge in admiring her. He didn’t care about her singing, one way or the other, but he would go a long way to see her in that dress.  
  
This time he picked a seat where he could see the stage. It was still a table at the back of the room, in a fall of shadow. He didn’t expect company, but when the trader Daisy pulled out a chair beside him, he didn’t complain.   
  
“Don’t usually come to see the show, but I like your friend,” Daisy said, settling back with an elbow over the back of her chair. “We talk about books. The library. You know we both used to go there when we were girls? Maybe even saw each other. I’m a little older than her, but you never know. I tell ya, when she came into my store all confused and said ‘you’re from my time?’ I almost swallowed my tongue. Thought she was a grade-A bullshitter for the longest time.” She chuckled. “Ain’t fair, being two hundred and forty and not looking a day over thirty, right?”  
  
A little while later, she came down the stairs, with Hancock at her heels. The man had a grin on his face that threatened to crack his face in two.   
  
She was wearing the red dress. Charon wondered, with a foolish little twinge of jealousy, whether Hancock had had a private show.   
  
She stood behind the microphone, and cleared her throat.  
  
“Okay,” she said. “Be nice to me, this is my first time singing in public since karaoke in college. I have some old songs for you. And I mean _old_ songs; this first one was over two hundred years old when _I_ first heard it.” She smiled wryly as the audience chuckled. “It’s a sad song, but a sweet one. It was sad back then, but it has a whole new sadness to it now. It’s about a rose.”  
  
“What’s a rose?” came the question from the floor, a scruffy little waif who had apparently never seen a magazine.   
  
“It’s a flower,” Daisy called out.  
  
“Bet it’s not as pretty as a daisy,” a smoothskin guard said, and flashed her a grin.  
  
She laughed. “Nice try, kid, but I’m about two hundred years too old for you.” Her face softened. “And a rose is a _lot_ more beautiful than a daisy.”  
  
The crowd quietened, and Sloan began to sing. And _god_ , she could _sing_.

  
 _“Tis the last rose of summer,_  
 _Left blooming alone;_  
 _All her lovely companions_  
 _Are faded and gone;_  
 _No flower of her kindred,_  
 _No rosebud is nigh,_  
 _To reflect back her blushes,_  
 _Or give sigh for sigh._  
  
 _I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!_  
 _To pine on the stem;_  
 _Since the lovely are sleeping,_  
 _Go, sleep thou with them._  
 _Thus kindly I scatter,_  
 _Thy leaves o'er the bed,_  
 _Where thy mates of the garden_  
 _Lie scentless and dead._  
  
 _So soon may I follow,_  
 _When friendships decay,_  
 _And from Love's shining circle_  
 _The gems drop away._  
 _When true hearts lie withered,_  
 _And fond ones are flown,_  
 _Oh! who would inhabit_  
 _This bleak world alone?”_  
  
  
He’d heard her sing plenty of times before, out in the wasteland, belting out songs along with her pip-boy or quietly to herself, but never like this. Her voice had never been so rich, so vibrant, like chocolate and smoke, grief, despair. It was devastating. As the notes died away, Charon could hear the sounds of sniffling through the audience. The older ghouls in particular had their heads bent, their hands pressed to their faces. It was some moments before the melancholy eased enough for the applause, and on the stage, Sloan’s face melted into a soft smile.   
  
“I miss roses,” Daisy sighed in the seat next to him. “You never think about the things you’ll miss. Roses… You suppose the man who wrote it ever thought there would be a day when there’d never be any ever again?”  
  
This, Charon decided, was a rhetorical question. He could see a rose, could picture one in his mind, but he could not recall a time when he had actually seen one in the flesh. Pictures, possibly. A photograph or a painting. The real thing would have had a smell, the touch of petals… He let his eyes settle on his mistress, bowing prettily up there on the stage, somehow withdrawn. She was good at this; why was she not more pleased?   
  
Her eyes roamed over the ceiling, and then settled back on the crowd.   
  
“I’m no Magnolia,” she said. “But, I think I know some songs she doesn’t. I have novelty value, I suppose. So many of the songs I loved don’t seem to have survived, except in my head. Maybe some of you remember them too. It’s been two hundred and ten years for some of you, and less than one for me. I’ll sing anything, if it helps keep a song alive. But today my head is full of sweet and sad songs. I’m not sure if this one survived the war...”  
  
Charon was inclined to close his eyes, to let her voice wash over him, but she was wearing the red dress, and it wasn’t right to close his eyes and miss a moment of that. Instead he watched her, almost possessively, and imagined the rest of the world had fallen away. There was no crowd eating her up with their ears and their eyes. There was nothing but that voice, and her figure in the spotlight, singing a song about loss.  
  
Then Hancock appeared beside him with a glass of bourbon, and the world cruelly reasserted itself.   
  
Hancock slid the glass across the table to him. He was grinning.  
  
Charon took it, cautiously, and dropped his eyes.   
  
“I apologise for —”  
  
“Ah ah ah!” Hancock waved a hand through the air. “No need. Good for people to let loose once in a while, right? Besides, it gave me an excuse to badger Sunshine into singing for me. She’s shy.” He shot a look at her across the room that was so purely affectionate that Charon felt embarrassed to have seen it. “God, that voice, though. Am I right?” Hancock collapsed into the chair next to him, and popped a pill into his mouth before washing it down with a mouthful of vodka. “It kills me.”  
  
 _“This is my least favourite life_  
 _The one where I’m out of my mind_  
 _The one where you’re just out of reach_  
 _The one where I stand, and you fly…”_  
  
“Why do you call her ‘Sunshine’?” Charon asked, gingerly taking a sip of his bourbon. He was not entirely sure it was not poisoned.  
  
Hancock chuckled, and spread his arms.  
  
“Because she lights up my life.”  
  
Charon watched the man as he picked his way around the bar, interacting with the people of his town. They _liked_ him. He gave them things, chems and caps and compliments, but they had a love for him that reached beyond that, to something else he was or must have done in the past. And there was something in the way he moved, a kind of savvy confidence, a grace, and Charon remembered Sloan had mentioned that. That he should watch the way he moved. When the mistress finished her second song, Hancock slipped through the crowd towards her, setting an arm around her waist and a kiss against her neck.  
  
“You get it now?” Daisy said, leaning across the table.  
  
“What did he do, to make everyone love him?”  
  
“Oh, that’s a _good_ story. But, it’s not really mine to tell. You’ll have to hear it from the man himself.” She took a sip of her glass of wine. “I _can_ tell you that he overthrew the jerks who ran this town before he did. And boy, those guys were assholes.” She nodded to the man, standing with Sloan by the bar. “He runs around with your girl sometimes, to make sure he doesn’t lose his edge, and doesn’t grow any new ones. It’s important to him to be one of the people. First among equals, you might say. Hence the historical get-up.”  
  
“He looks ridiculous.”  
  
“Aw, that’s part of the fun. Besides, I think it suits him.”  
  
Sloan sang one more song, strange and dark and sorrowful, old as time, old as bone. _There were three ravens sat on a tree, they were as black as they might be_. It was haunting, and when the last notes died away it took the room some time to come back to the present. She made her bows, and some of the crowd began to disperse, though others stayed to chat and drink, and one of the smoothskin watchmen picked up a guitar and plucked out a few passable tunes.  
  
Daisy clicked her tongue against her teeth.  
  
“I’m off then, fella. Say hi to your girl for me.”  
  
She patted him briefly on the shoulder, and he was left alone.  
  
But only for a moment. Sloan, a glass of wine in her hand, floated across the room to his table, and lowered herself into Hancock’s vacated chair with a contented sigh.  
  
“Thank you for coming,” she said to him. She was turning her glass in her hands, with a far-away smile. “I always get such awful stage fright when I sing. I’m so petrified my voice will break, or I’ll forget the words, or everyone will laugh at me. It’s so stupid. I don’t know why it makes me so nervous; I never had a problem speaking in court. Just with singing. Hancock’s been hankering to show me off for months now.”  
  
“Your voice is very good,” Charon told her, dropping his eyes to his glass. “Better than Magnolia.”  
  
She scoffed. “Liar. Anyway, Magnolia has the stage presence. She can sing something that goes straight down the spinal cord into your crotch.” She shivered. “I can’t do anything like that. I had all these ideas of singing that old Peggy Lee song, _Why Don’t You Do Right_ , but I chickened out. You really need sex appeal for that sort of thing. All slinky and sensual.”  
  
“Next time, Sunshine.” Hancock appeared at her shoulder, and ran the back of his finger down her cheek. “You got all the sex appeal you need. You were _incredible_.”  
  
“You’re biased,” she said, but she looked pleased.   
  
He just grinned at her. “Hey, I got some business. You want to head upstairs and see me later?”  
  
“I think I’ll head to the Rexford. I feel like kicking my feet up a little.”   
  
“Sure. See ya later, Sunshine.”  
  
Sloan watched Hancock swagger over to the Mr Handy beside the bar, and then turned to give Charon a soft smile.  
  
“You wanna come with?” she asked him. She swirled her drink in her glass, and took a mouthful. “You’ve been quiet, even for you. I could do with an unbiased report.”  
  
“You hold my contract. Why would I be unbiased?” Charon swallowed the last of his bourbon, and set his glass heavily back down on the table.   
  
“I could order you to tell the truth,” she said, with a smile that made him think she was a little drunk. Teasing him.  
  
“But you won’t. Not in Goodneighbor.”  
  
Her smile widened.   
  
“No, I won’t,” she said. She settled back in her chair, watching him across the table. “I like you here. You’re more relaxed. Bolder.”  
  
“It is possible Hancock drugged me.”  
  
“Ha!” She tipped her drink back, swallowing the last of the red, and he could see it on her lips as she set her glass back on the table. “Are you coming?” she asked him, rising to her feet.  
  
It was interesting, he thought as he followed her up the stairs. She did not have to tell him it was not an order, or that he could stay if he wished. She spoke as if she expected him to make up his own mind, and he did.   
  
She was right. He felt at ease here. Among equals.   
  
That was… new.  
  
“I’d feel obliged,” she said as she shut her hotel door behind them, “if you’d turn around for just a sec. I feel good in this dress, but it’s hard as hell to relax in.”  
  
“One moment,” Charon said with a smirk. Slowly, deliberately, he let his eyes drift down over her, memorising the look of that shimmering red clinging to those curves. Then he gave her a nod, and turned.   
  
“I’m going to ask Hancock what he put in your drink,” she huffed, and he chuckled.  
  
He had been half-joking when he said it but now, listening to the sound of her zipper descending with a kind of detached pleasure, he wondered if he may have been right. There was a warmth, a sort of fuzziness… he felt rather like he did when he’d just copped a good dose of radiation.  
  
“Rad water, maybe,” he said. “Do they mix drinks with that here?”  
  
“Not usually, as far as I know. But Hancock has a lot of private reserve stuff behind the bar. I’ll make sure he _asks_ you next time, before drugging you up.”  
  
A rustle of clothing, and the sound of springs.   
  
“All right, you can turn around now.”   
  
He turned to find her sprawled out on the bed, one hand propping up her chin.   
  
“Really though, was I any good?” she asked him. “After the first one when no one clapped, I thought I was going to die up there.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “God, I hate that. I’m glad I’m doing this, it’ll be good to work through this stupid fear.”  
  
“The first one made the older ones think of what they had lost, and the younger ones realise what they had never known,” Charon told her. “They were grieving.”  
  
“Did it make you sad?”  
  
It had torn his heart out and left it rotting in the wasteland sun, but he couldn’t tell her that. He shrugged.  
  
She was silent for a moment, chewing on the inside of her lip.   
  
“I think I was grieving, too,” she said. “It’s why I chose it. I’m not alone, but... I mean… yeah, I miss roses. But it’s not _about_ roses, it’s about… death. Loss. The things that linger on long after they should have. Like me.” She was silent for a moment, and then sighed. “There’s _so much_ that I miss. People, plants, stupid little things like the crossword in the Saturday paper. When I got here, when I crawled out of the vault, it was hell. The whole thing felt like a fever dream, from the moment the bombs fell. I was staring at those mushroom clouds and it didn’t feel real. For the first month or two I’d have these dreams, every night, and they weren’t nightmares, exactly. It would just be me, Nate, the neighbours, my colleagues, all going about our normal, boring days. I was so happy in these dreams, because the wasteland had just been a nightmare. I’d tell Nate about it and he’d laugh at me and kiss my cheek, and we’d put it behind us and go picnic in the sun, or something. But then I’d wake up in the wreckage of some building and realise that _that_ had been a dream, the wasteland was _real_ and not a nightmare, and it’d hit me all over again.”  
  
Charon sought for something to say. The pleasant fog of whatever it was had begun to dissipate, and he wanted to cling to it for a while, to bask in its soft pleasure and not to talk about these things.   
  
“It must be hard,” he said at last, “to wake up from your husband’s face to mine.”  
  
He saw her wince as if in pain.   
  
“No,” she said, “that’s just it. Those dreams… I still have those dreams sometimes. But it’s not the same.” She rolled onto her stomach, her legs bent, feet raised off the mattress as she picked absently at the callouses on her palm. “Now, when I have those dreams, I wake up next to Nate and I’m terrified. This whole world I’ve come to know here, all the people, the friends I’ve made, Nick and MacCready and you, Ellie and Cricket and Daisy and Hancock… I wake up next to Nate and realise you’ve all just been a dream. And I panic. He asks me what’s wrong and I don’t know what to say. What could I say? I’d sound crazy. I had a dream where the world ended and I built a life there but it wasn’t real? So I just tell him I’m fine. I walk through my day and everyone’s so bright and cheery, and I’m dying inside because all these people… they weren’t just dead, they were _never real_. It’s devastating. And when I really _do_ wake up, and I see you or I see MacCready or whoever, I’m… I’m happy. Because you’re real after all. And if you’re not, and this is all some fucked up coma dream… I guess… I guess sometimes I don’t want to wake up. I know it must make me a horrible person, or something, to prefer this world to that one, but even with all the things I miss… I’m happy here.”  
  
Charon did not remember crossing the room. He was just _there_ , suddenly, lowering himself to sit on the bed next to her, and she pushed herself up to dangle her feet off the bed beside him. And then he put an arm around her, and pulled her into a hug.  
  
She chuckled against his chest. “You’re _hugging_ me,” she said, teasing him with his own words. “Someone should mix rad water into your bourbon more often.”  
  
“Troublesome smoothskin,” he muttered.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~emotions~
> 
> Songs! "The Last Rose of Summer" is from the mid-19th century, there are some old recordings on wikipedia and there's a beautiful rendition by Celtic Woman. It seemed appropriate. The second song is "This is My Least Favourite Life" by Lera Lynn which I just thought was particularly poignant for someone whose husband died. The third song is a verrrry old folk ballad called The Three Ravens. There's a particularly haunting version from A History of Britain you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmKMrxG5no
> 
> Related: I'd love for her to find a holotape of like Tom Waits or something and play it at the Third Rail because all the ghouls would hear someone who sounded a bit like them. I won't write it because I don't know whether they DID put music on holotapes or whether it was all on vinyl or whatever, but I enjoy thinking about it.
> 
> Why is the bar so full? Does Goodneighbor really give that much of a shit about having a different singer for a change? Maybe they do, or maybe Hancock lowkey threatened everyone that they better turn up or else. You decide! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
> 
> Also chocolate probably doesn't still exist but maybe Charon has some vague memories of it or something idk *vague handwave*


	18. Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later that evening...

  
His mistress left, eventually, to spend some time with Hancock, and Charon stretched out on the bed a little while before deciding to go back down to the bar. He managed to coax the Mr Handy into admitting his sins; apparently Hancock had an especially irradiated supply of water for mixing into his drinks, or freezing into ice cubes, and these ice cubes had been floating in the bourbon he had given to Charon that evening. A gift, rather than a drugging, or so the robot insisted. He bought another bourbon, no ice, and settled in a corner of the room.  
  
He was used to watching. In the Ninth Circle all he had done was watch, for years, and it was habit for him now. He watched the people, coming in, buying drinks, talking, dancing. But this time he chose to watch. He watched, and did not hate them for their freedom. At least, not as much.  
  
A ghoul caught Charon’s eye as he came down the stairs; tall, with a flat cap. He paused at the bar, his hands braced against the wood, and spoke to Whitechapel Charlie. Then they both turned to look at him, and the ghoul gave the robot a nod before making a beeline for Charon’s table. He paused in front of him, sizing him up, and gave him a respectful nod.  
  
“Charlie says you know someone I might be looking for,” the ghoul said, crossing his arms.  
  
“Sloan,” Charon said. It could be no one else. A muscle twitched under one eye. “What do you want with her?”  
  
“What is she to you?”  
  
“She holds my contract.”  
  
That struck the ghoul, and he straightened. “Wait, I’ve heard of you. From _years_ back. You used to work for that fucker in D.C., Ahzrukhal or something.”  
  
Charon set his drink down with a _clunk_. He fought against the urge to pull himself to his feet and intimidate this man with his height, to loom and glower as he’d had ample chance to practice in the Ninth Circle. He was not Ahzrukhal’s pet any longer. But that was precisely it… As much as the man’s name might make him twitch, its utterance was not a _threat_. And it would not be wise to risk starting another fight.  
  
He kept his seat, but he could not keep his lip from curling into a snarl.  
  
“I did,” he said. “I don’t any more. Now I work for Sloan. What do you want?”  
  
“My boss wants to talk to your boss,” the ghoul said, his mouth twitching into a smile. “Edward Deegan. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Miss Sloan. My boss has another job for her. If she wants it, tell her to come by Cabot Manor. She knows the way.”  
  
“I will tell her.”  
  
“Good. Then I’ll be seeing you, Charon.” He touched his cap, and made his exit.  
  
Charon waited in the bar until Deegan was long gone. He had tried to place the man, and couldn’t. Had Deegan known his name, or had the robot given it to him? He did not mind being known but being recognised twice in one day was unnerving, and it bothered him to still be connected to that bastard Ahzrukhal. Ten years and his ghost still followed him around. Charon swallowed the rest of his bourbon and ordered another, just to get the taste of bile out of his mouth. He tipped it back, paid his tab, and stalked up the stairs. His relatively good mood had been disturbed, and he wanted to get what sleep he could in a place that felt at least a little safe.  
  
He unlocked the door to the hotel room, and had both his boots and his shirt off before he realised his mistress had come back here to sleep.  
  
He had watched over her while she slept countless nights out in the wasteland, but always tucked up in a sleeping bag, her face hidden. Here, unfettered, she was spread out, one arm tangled in the blankets, one leg dangling off the edge of the bed, her face pale against the mattress.  
  
Charon hesitated. He did, genuinely, want to get what sleep he could. They were as safe here as they could be in the Commonwealth, as safe as they were in her house in Diamond City. And suddenly he felt very, very tired.  
  
 The bed was large enough for two, but she was sprawled right across it, and he did not know whether this was by accident or design. Should he go elsewhere? Back to the bar? Should he stay awake and keep watch, or rent another room? What did she expect from him? She must have known he would return at some point. And she did seem to prefer it when he slept.  
  
He was tempted to wake her up and ask her what it was that she intended here. Another part of him, spurred on by alcohol, said _fuck it. If she wants you out, she’ll order you out._ What the hell else did she expect him to do? He was tired, and there was a bed, and they were safe.  
  
Carefully, he eased into the bed next to her, trying to shift her over without waking her. She made a muffled, sleep-addled sound, and latched onto his arm, and he sighed.  
  
“Come on, smoothskin,” he said, shaking her. “I’d like some sleep, too. Move over.”  
  
She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Too big to be Hancock,” she muttered. “Too rough-skinned to be Nate, and he’s dead. But Charon doesn’t sleep. A mystery.” She quirked one eye open, smirked at him, and released his arm.  
  
“Charon would like to sleep tonight,” he said a little petulantly, laying his head on the pillow. “It’s safe enough. I can sleep.”  
  
“You can always sleep,” she said, shuffling over a little to give him room. She tugged at the blankets, spreading them more evenly over the both of them. “I can stay up. I can take watch. I always used to, before I found you.”  
  
“But it is not safe.”  
  
He saw her lips curve upwards in the gloom.  
  
“It will be safe enough with someone watching. _I_ can take watch,” she repeated. “I’m _good_ at taking watch. I don’t fall asleep by accident or anything.” She yawned, and closed her eyes. “I’ll keep you safe.”  
  
Charon grunted. “And if I wake with the contract screaming in my head because you’ve disappeared and I wasn’t awake, and I can’t find you, it’ll drive me mad trying to hunt you down. Or I’ll wake to find your corpse and then I have to give the fucking contract to someone _else_. It is my job to defend you. _I_ keep watch.”  
  
She made a soothing sort of sound, a quiet hum. “That’d be almost sweet, if it wasn’t your contractual obligation. Okay, Charon. You keep watch, if you want. But not tonight.”  
  
“No,” he said settling down. “Not tonight.”  
  
She was quiet, and he thought she was sleeping, but then she rolled onto her back, one arm flung onto the pillow above her head, and stared up at the ceiling. He could see the shimmer of moonlight reflected on her eyes, the outline of her profile in the dark.  
  
“There was a song,” she said. “Not a song, really, because it had no words. A piece of music, from long ago. This piece, it was about fear and sorrow and hardship… and hope. The people here… they make me think of that song.” She paused. “Ghouls used to live in Diamond City, before the mayor there threw them out. You know that? Diamond City had a vote, decided they didn’t want them around any more, and dragged them out into the streets. A lot of them couldn’t survive outside the walls. They couldn’t scav for food and they couldn’t protect themselves against the raiders. That was before Hancock was Hancock… before Goodneighbor was Goodneighbor.  
  
“This music,” she said, shifting on the mattress, “was called _Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground_. The guy who wrote it was a blues singer, Willie Johnson. His stepmother blinded him with lye when he was a child, but he learnt guitar, he sang gospel songs on street corners. He recorded some songs, just a few, and later they influenced generations. But back in the 1940s, he wasn’t anyone. His house burned down, and he had nowhere to go, so he slept in the ruins until he got sick. The hospitals wouldn’t treat him. He worsened, and then he died. But,” she raised her chin, a new note in her voice, “three hundred years ago scientists sent a probe into space. They called it Voyager. This probe would travel through the solar system, out past all the planets, out past the comets and the asteroids, on and on into the space between the stars. On this probe they put the best they could find of all humanity. A bottle in the cosmic ocean. A message that says _we were here._ They put on this probe our images and our words and our music, recorded it all on gold. Just in case, one day, perhaps a hundred million years from now, some other species out there finds it. Willie Johnson’s music is on that probe. _Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground._ He died poor and sick and forgotten, but his music is still out there, among the stars.”  
  
Charon turned his head to stare up at the ceiling.  
  
“Did he know?” he asked.  
  
“No. This was long after he was gone.”  
  
“This is what you think about in the middle of the night?”  
  
She chuckled. “Yeah, I guess. Gives me a sense of perspective when my mind goes gloomy. What about you, killer? What do you think about, when I’m sleeping?”  
  
“I try not to.” He looked over at her, at the line of her profile, black against the wall. “How do you know all these things?”  
  
She made an amused sound at the back of her throat. “Ten years of bar trivia nights. Plus, I’m pretty well educated. For whatever use it is, now.” She turned onto her side, and sighed.  
  
They did not speak again. Her breathing slowed, took on the rhythm he recognised as sleep, and he watched her until he realised he was doing so, and turned away. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the next chapter are a bit shorter, it's just kind of the way it ended up. Sorry about that.
> 
> I take some satisfaction in having written ~bed sharing chapter~ without any sexual tension. I think it's more significant for Charon that he's actually just comfortable being asleep in the same room as someone else. Besides, he deserves some soft comfortable sleeping time. 
> 
> I stole the gist of the Blind Willie Johnson speech from Josh Lyman, The West Wing, I think season 5. Reworded it a bit and added some more details, though. "A bottle in the cosmic ocean" is Carl Sagan.
> 
> I think Sloan must be really into space and shit. Stars come up several times in upcoming chapters. That's something that kind of happened by accident.
> 
> Am I the only one who kind of wishes you could romance Deegan? I love that guy.


	19. Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all your sad-ghoul-boy needs

_Chhharrronn._  
  
He squeezed his eyes shut. He did not want to listen to this voice. This man… he had been a _bad_ employer.  
  
_Charon. Follow me._  
  
He did not want to follow him. Nothing good ever happened at the end of this hallway. He wanted to stay where he was, in the small cell where he had some brief respite from him. He wanted to stay, but there was the order, and nothing he could do would stop the order. It took control of him, pulled him after the voice, and in his terror he pleaded with the contract that twisted in his nerves.  
  
_Please. Please. Not this time. Just not today. Tomorrow, I’ll obey him again. But not today._  
  
The contract did not listen. The contract did not care. All that mattered were the orders, and it dragged him onwards.  
  
The man was smiling, with his teeth that were too white, and as he led him through that door Charon cursed the thoughtless cunt who had limited the invalidation of his contract to the words _physical violence._

  
***

  
  
“Charon!”  
  
His eyes snapped open. There was a shape in the dim light and instinctively he tried to defend himself, his arms lifting to shove the figure away, but as his hands touched them the order _screeched_ in his mind, _DO NOT HARM CONTRACT-HOLDER_ , and he folded back into himself, curling into a protective ball.  
  
“Oh, Jesus. Charon...”  
  
He felt a hand on his arm, gentle and cool, and _soft_ , far too soft, and he lifted his head to see a pair of hazel eyes.  
  
“You were having a nightmare,” she breathed. “You’re safe. It’s okay.”  
  
Her hand on his arm was unbearable; he detested the smoothness of her skin against his own, especially now with all his synapses firing and his mind screaming _danger_. He shuddered, shaking her off, and moved away from her to sit on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. His back was to her, and he could feel her eyes picking out every scar, every horrific whorl of his ruined flesh.  
  
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look at me.”  
  
He heard something that might have been a sigh, and then he felt her back pressed up against his, cool, so much cooler than the hot skin of a ghoul. It was wrong, but it was so soothing. He didn’t want to move, and he was revolted with himself. He wondered if she found him as monstrous as he did.  
  
Long minutes passed, and she said nothing. Eventually Charon twisted to look over his shoulder, to find her sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest.  
  
“Sloan?”  
  
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m just going to sit here for a while, until you tell me not to.”  
  
He turned back to face the wall, rubbing his palms together.  
  
“I woke you.”  
  
“No. I mean, yes, you did, but it doesn’t matter. I tried to… Y-you were twitching, and I didn’t want to touch you in case…” She stopped, and took a deep breath. “I was afraid, a little, that in your dream you might think I was attacking you. I know you can’t hurt me but... And I couldn’t wake you up. I was saying your name and I couldn’t wake you up. I’m sorry.”  
  
“There was a person in my dream calling my name,” he said. “But it wasn’t you. Another employer… they did not sound like you.” A muscle in his arm twitched. When she did not reply, he swallowed, tried to diffuse the tension in the air. “You didn’t say ‘It was only a dream,’” he said.  
  
“No,” she said. “I was in the army. Not for long, but it… affected me. It affected my colleagues. And Nate was infantry, on the front lines. I slept beside him for years. So I know the difference. It’s in the breathing. If it was just a dream we wouldn’t be sitting here.”  
  
“No,” he agreed, and let out a shaking breath. “It was not just a dream.”  
  
They sat for a long time, her back pressed against his, until he no longer felt the sour fingers of the dream-memories lingering at the edges of his mind. He shifted, twisting and moving back so he could look at her, and as his back left hers she flopped down into his lap. He blinked down at her in surprise, and she gave him a sheepish smile.  
  
“Hello. You’re warm,” she said.  
  
“All ghouls are warm.”  
  
“Are they? I’ve only really had experience with Hancock. Most ghouls don’t seem to be big on touching.” She closed her eyes, and dug her shoulder-blades into the mattress. “Let me know if you want me to move.”  
  
It was not altogether unpleasant to have her head in his lap. Charon settled back against the headboard and looked down at her, hair spread out against his legs, her face relaxed. It was comforting, on the one hand, and nearly subversive on the other. No, not unpleasant. It gave him a sense of something, something warm and relaxed and almost familiar, that he did not have a word for. He found his hand was hovering above her head, as if to stroke her hair, and drew it back.  
  
“There was a ghoul at the bar. Edward Deegan,” he told her. “He said you knew him.”  
  
“I picked something up for his boss once. Do they need me again?”  
  
“So it appears.”  
  
“All right.” She smiled to herself. “We’ve nothing else to do during the day, and we’re here for a week. May as well see what other trouble we can get up to around here. What do you think?”  
  
Charon hesitated. “You are… asking my opinion?” He caught himself, again, about to touch her hair, and bit the inside of his cheek.  
  
She shrugged, her shoulders nudging against his thigh. “Sure. I’ve been dragging you all around the Commonwealth since we met. It’s about time we did something you wanted to do.”  
  
“You are my employer, smoothskin,” he reminded her, a teasing note creeping into his voice. “I follow you, for good or ill.”  
  
“Well _yeah_ , but, I mean, it’s not as if I _pay_ you. You’re getting a raw deal here.”  
  
Would she notice if he touched her hair? Probably, right? It looked so silky soft…  
  
Her eyes snapped open, and he nearly panicked at the thought that she might have read his mind somehow.  
  
“Actually,” she said, “why _are_ you in this situation?” Her voice was soft, contemplative, and she ran her tongue along her top row of teeth as she looked up at the ceiling. “I mean, this isn’t the sort of thing a person _signs up_ _for_ , right? Is this something you can remember, or is it a ‘lost to the mists of time’ thing?”  
  
“Lost,” he said. Could he _ask_ to touch her hair?  
  
She turned her face towards him. “You must have wondered, though.”  
  
“Sometimes.” She was watching him. If she wanted to stop him, she would. Carefully, hesitantly, he reached over, ready at any moment to snatch his hand away. She watched him with a gentle smile, and when she did not object, he let his fingers settle on her hair. _Soft_. How could it still be so soft, after so many months in the wasteland?  
  
“You don’t try to remember?” she asked him. “I would. It would drive me crazy, not knowing.”  
  
His eyes were on the shimmer of moonlight on her hair, shining in through the slats of wood nailed up on the windows. He slipped his fingers into it, combed them through, letting the locks fall when he reached the ends. It was soothing, somehow.  
  
“No. I don’t think most of my life was worth remembering. Your hair is soft.”  
  
She chuckled “It’s always been such a tangle. You should have seen me try to tame it for court. I went through an unreasonable amount of hairspray. Believe it or not, it behaves more the less I wash it. Found myself a boar-bristle brush in Diamond City once, best purchase I’ve ever made” A beat. “You know, if you wanted to find out why you have that contract, you could always try the Memory Den. They can help you find specific memories — Charon?”  
  
He had stilled, his hand tangled in her hair. She reached up, and took it in both of hers.  
  
“Okay,” she said, “bad idea.”  
  
He swallowed, trying to ignore her cool hands wrapped around his as he marshaled his thoughts.  
  
“I assume it was forgotten for a reason,” he said at last. “I do not remember, if I can avoid it. There are many things I remember well enough already that I wish… I could not.”  
  
“It’s okay. I get it.”  
  
She rubbed a thumb along the heel of his palm in a way that almost made him hiss, too much sensation, and he tried not to rush as he disentangled his hand from hers. Then, haltingly, he threaded it back into her hair.  
  
“You don’t mind…? I… your hair is soft.”  
  
“I don’t mind.” She shifted, and closed her eyes. “I like it. It’s soothing. My mother used to brush my hair every night… I guess it makes some subconscious part of me feel like I was back there again. Safe.”  
  
“The contract demands I keep you safe."  
  
She hummed a laugh. “So it does.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have many thoughts about what constitutes "physical violence" and what does not. It seems pretty straightforward at first, and then you think "does punching him companionably on the shoulder count?" and "what about drugging him?" and "what if you grabbed his butt?"
> 
> I've settled on a pretty narrow definition, and I think most other Charon fics do too, even if there's no particular digging into the issue. 
> 
> Also, to everyone who was all "I hope Charon has a nice rest" on the last chapter... sorry. He did not.


	20. Pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wasting time in Goodneighbor.

  
He woke to find her still curled up on his lap. Her face relaxed in sleep made his chest clench in a way that was almost, but not quite, completely foreign to him, and he pushed the sensation aside.  
  
He watched her, chest rising and falling, her fist curled against her cheek, and he reached out to gently stroke her hair away from her face.  
  
“Mmmf.” She turned her face to press her forehead against his thigh, and it was several seconds before she seemed to realise where she was, and lifted her head. “Sorry,” she said, with a sheepish smile. “You should have woken me.”  
  
“I fell asleep,” Charon said.   
  
“Good. I really wish you would sleep more. I’m sure it’s not good for your brain, to stay up for weeks at a time.” She put a hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. “Still should’ve woken me. It can’t have been comfortable, sleeping sitting up like that. You’ll have a crick in your neck if you keep that up.” She rolled onto her back beside him, and stretched her arms out above her head. “God, I’m tired. You think that after sleeping two hundred years I’d be sick of it.” Her mouth quirked into a smile.   
  
His eyes caught on a small scar on her knee. It surprised him, for some reason. He had come to think of her as some flawless thing, her unmarked skin the opposite of everything that made ghouls so hideous, and the gash across her eye the only acknowledgement of the dangers of the wasteland.  
  
“You have a scar,” he said.   
  
“You’re only just noticing?” she teased him.  
  
“On your knee.”  
  
“Oh, that.” She smiled as she sat up and ran her thumb across the small white line. “I got that climbing over some barbed wire fence as a kid. My brother got me into all kinds of trouble.”  
  
“You didn’t have a stimpak?”  
  
“We didn’t carry them around with us in those days. It’s not like there were raiders hiding around every corner. Stims stayed in the first-aid kit at home. And I couldn’t tell my mom about it or she’d have asked what we were doing out there.” She flopped down onto her stomach and grinned at him. “Do I get to ask you about your scars now?”  
  
“If you want to be here all day,” he said, and she laughed.  
  
“Maybe I do. I used to do that sometimes before the war, just stay in bed all day. I miss it. Pyjama Sundays.”  
  
“This is a… holiday? Tradition?”  
  
She waved a hand. “It was just something I used to do, back in college. It was more fun when Nate came along, of course… I’d just hang out in my underwear all day, watching bad TV and eating cold pizza and ice cream. It was a great way to de-stress, especially when I was studying for the Bar. Go out drinking on Friday, get some studying done Saturday, and then Pyjama Sunday.”  
  
“How does one study for a bar? More drinking?”  
  
She laughed, rolling onto her back. “No! The Bar is… that’s what we called law as, like, a profession. If you’re admitted to the Bar, that means you can practice as a lawyer. You had to pass this super hard exam and it just chewed people up and spat them out. It was intense. Passing that monster was one of the proudest moments of my life.”  
  
Charon looked down at her, sprawled out on the sheets with a dreamy smile upon her face. He frowned.  
  
“And now it means nothing. Very few will even know what it was.”  
  
“Yeah. Bit of a bastard, isn’t it?”  
  
“I am sorry.”  
  
She reached out to catch his hand and squeeze it. “Don’t be. I mean, I — I get angry, sometimes. At everyone who let the bombs fall. At fate. I get angry and I’m — I’m still working through it, I think. In my head. But right now I’m alive, I’m here, I have people.” She squeezed his hand again, and let him go. “Come on, killer,” she said, pushing herself upright. “Let’s go make ourselves useful, or something.”  
  
“No underwear day?”   
  
“Well,” she flashed him a smile, “I’m game if you are, big guy.”  
  
He bit the inside of his cheek as he watched her cross the room to the dresser. He caught himself admiring her in in her t-shirt and tiny shorts, his eyes lingering on the curve of her hips. No. No, no no. That would be a very bad idea.  
  
“You enjoy teasing me,” he grumbled, pulling himself to his feet and reaching down for his shirt.   
  
“I do,” she said, pulling her own shirt from a drawer. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to behave myself.”  
  
She did not sound as though she intended to try at all. This felt like _flirting_ , and Charon ground his teeth.   
  
“I will wait outside for you to dress, mistress,” he said, and closed the door behind him before she could respond.   
  
He leant back and kicked his foot up against the wall as he waited. Goddamn _tantalising_ smoothskin. He didn’t think she was doing this on purpose, but it rankled that she did not seem to realise he was a man as well as a ghoul. Sleeping next to her had felt companionable, sexless; her back pressed against his in the night was more comforting than sensual. There had been affection, yes, but he had hardly looked at her bare legs. He had been too fascinated by the texture of her hair. Sliding his fingers through it _had_ been sensual in a way, even intimate, but it wasn’t _erotic_. It was soothing.   
  
Strange to have slept next to someone, a woman, for the first time in who knew how long, and have it be so utterly innocent.   
  
That had fled with the darkness. In daylight, the dreamy comfort of night burned away, she was all long limbs and vitality. She was red blood and soft skin, and she smelt of sleep and sweat and herself. He hated reflecting on the night before with those thoughts in his mind, throwing up images of her curled up on the bed next to him, clutching at his arm, the curve of her hip under the blanket, her head on his lap. No. He didn’t want to taint the memory of that night, of her kindness, with thoughts like that.   
  
_You’re allowed to think me pretty_ , she had said to him once. _Pretty_. Did she think his balls had fallen off along with his nose?   
  
He had to stop thinking like this.  
  
The door banged open, and Sloan sprang through, wearing a black trenchcoat and matching hat. She tipped up the brim, and flashed him a grin.  
  
“Fear not, citizen! The Silver Shroud is here!”  
  
“The fuck are you doing?” He stared at her.  
  
“Playing pretend.” Her grin eased into a self-conscious smile. “A guy here just _loves_ this old radio show that used to play before the war, _The Silver Shroud_. It was about this man who went around righting wrongs, protecting the innocent, you know. Comic book stuff. I feel a bit silly but, I don’t know, it’s kind of fun. The people feel safer, and Kent feels like he’s making a difference, and I got this sweet outfit into the bargain.”  
  
“It’s about three sizes too big for you.”  
  
“Yeah but the hat looks good, right?” She tipped it to him, and then started fiddling with the dials on her pip-boy.   
  
He walked past her, back into the room to find his armour, and she followed him, clicking through the data on the little personal computer.  
  
“See, Kent has the radio show back up and running. Old pre-war episodes, I mean. But he’ll put out these bulletins about these shitheads causing trouble and then I go take ‘em out, leave a calling card, and he gives an update. _Silver Shroud takes out jerkwad, the citizens of Goodneighbor can rest easy._ That sort of thing. This place, you know, it’s mostly a take-care-of-yourself kind of deal, except for Hancock. Hancock helps people out. He’s even been accused of going soft, by people who immediately regret it. But he doesn’t like it when people take advantage of the underdogs of the world, so Kent and I got his blessing to keep the streets slightly cleaner. A while ago I took out this hitman — well, hit-woman — and His-Worship-The-Mayor wants me to get rid of a couple of her friends. He thinks it’ll draw out the Big Boss. Sound like fun?”  
  
It did, and it was. One of these henchmen had bodyguards, men in pinstripe suits and spats that Sloan referred to as triggermen, but neither was too difficult to dispatch, and it was a satisfying way to spend a day. They trooped back after sunset, Sloan changed into her red dress, and Charon spent the evening pleasantly drunk, listening to his smoothskin enchantress sing songs from another world.   
  
She had worked up the nerve for _Why Don’t You Do Right_ , and taught one of the musicians the chords, and Charon, in his warm haze of alcohol, couldn’t work out why she had thought she didn’t have what it took for that song. It was a challenge from a queen, part seduction, part scorn. Of course she had what it took. She was whisky and dark chocolate, tarberry syrup, a warm gun. The sway of her hips as she sashayed around the room just _ruined_ him. He knew he was in trouble but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He could want her, privately, silently. Who would know?  
  
She did not return to their room that night, and he wasn’t at all surprised. If he were Hancock, he would have kept her all night, too. He did not allow himself to linger on what precisely such a night would entail. There was no reason to torment himself with what he could not have.   
  
He thought of other things instead, other women, curved thighs and silken skin. The only women he could remember being with were ghouls, in rare stolen moments when his orders gave him the leeway to do as he wished. He might not be attractive, but there were plenty of ghoul women who were intrigued by his height and his strength, and he took full advantage of that whenever he could, which was not often.   
  
There were women enough in Goodneighbor who might have him. Maybe even one of the humans — and _that_ was an illicit thought. But no. Not tonight, anyway. He indulged in fantasy instead, making the most of his rare privacy and stroking himself to completion twice before cleaning himself off and falling asleep.  
  
He did not wake until there was a knock on the door the next morning. He lifted his head from the pillow just as the door opened, and his mistress, slightly bedraggled and still wearing her sparkling dress, gave him a warm smile.  
  
“You do not need to knock. It is your room,” he said, letting his head fall back onto the pillow.  
  
“I didn’t want to catch you unawares, in case you weren’t decent. Speaking of being indecent,” she closed the door and reached behind herself for her zip, “no peeking.”  
  
He hadn’t wanted to until she mentioned it, but it was order enough for the contract, and if he tried he’d regret it. He closed his eyes and turned to face the wall, content enough to drift back into sleep if she would let him.   
  
“I want to go to Cabot Manor today,” she told him, clothes rustling. “What do you think?”  
  
“I think nothing, mistress. Though I wouldn’t mind another hour’s sleep.”  
  
“Then sleep you shall have.”  
  
There was more rustling, and then the padding of running footsteps and a half-second of silence before she landed on the far side of the bed, making him bounce. He opened his eyes, and saw her in her pyjama shorts and tank top, a book in one hand.  
  
“You changed into your bedclothes? You’ll just have to change again in an hour.”  
  
“They’re comfy. The dress is not comfy.”  
  
“You wore it all night,” he pointed out, and she gave him a look.  
  
“I wore it _briefly_. Hancock has a lot of ideas about dressing me up in this or that but when we actually get down to it he rips them right off again.” She smiled to herself. “The dress spent most of the night on the floor. If you want details, he likes to kiss and tell.”  
  
Charon squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his face. “I should not have mentioned it,” he grumbled.  
  
She laughed, and burrowed her way under the covers. “Was that an over-share? I’ll try to do better. I get used to him, that’s all,” she said, rolling onto her stomach and opening her book. “He can be very open about that sort of thing. The man has no shame.”  
  
Charon grunted his agreement. Hancock certainly had no shame.  
  
It was warmer under the covers with two, and nothing at all like it had been the other night. He was very aware of her lying next to him, with her long legs and her damnably smooth skin. He wanted to be closer and farther away at the same time. Instead he kept his eyes shut and in the hope that he could doze off again.   
  
After a few minutes he sighed, and cursed, and pulled himself out of bed.   
  
“Sorry,” she told him. “My fault, I should have slipped in here like a ninja instead of knocking on the door.”  
  
“Not your fault, smoothskin,” he said. “It is your room. And if you could sneak past me, I would make a poor bodyguard.”  
  
“Best bodyguard I’ve ever had,” she said.  
  
“Have you had others?” he smirked at her over his shoulder.   
  
“Nope.” Her eyes were still on her book, an amused smile twisting her lips.   
  
Charon had claimed the second drawer in the dresser, mostly at her insistence, and he crossed the room to retrieve a shirt.   
  
“Then would I not also be the _worst_ bodyguard you ever had?” He slipped the shirt over his head, and turned back to her.  
  
She giggled to herself, and turned the page.   
  
“You’ve set a high bar, if I ever have another one. Not that I plan to. But then I didn’t plan for you, either.”  
  
Charon did not, as a rule, worry about whether his existence in their lives bothered his employers. He didn’t much care if he irritated them, and those who had found his presence a chore either sold him or found him something to do out of their immediate vicinity.

 _She_ would not do that. She would keep him around whether she wanted him or not, because she was a good person and because — as best as Charon could work out — she considered him a _responsibility._   
  
He hesitated, feeling almost as if he should apologise. Then she looked up at him, and smiled.   
  
“Sure glad I found you, though,” she said.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Why Don't You Do Right" is by Peggy Lee, but you may know it better as the song Jessica Rabbit sings in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Sloan was probably deeply self-conscious the whole time.


	21. Radio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which plans are disrupted.

  
  
Cabot Manor was huge. The square outside was patrolled by a sentrybot that demanded their identification, and to Charon’s horror Sloan ignored it.  
  
“It only attacks if you shoot first,” she said, pulling a key from her pocket. “Doesn’t mean the thing doesn’t scare the crap out of me, but it’s never been a problem so far.”  
  
Few people gave their hirelings the key to their home, and Charon chewed on the inside of his cheek. All was not as it seemed.  
  
He stood in the entryway while Sloan went to look around the living room, gazing about himself at the expensive old furniture with a sense of unease. It took him a couple of minutes to work out what was wrong with the place.   
  
It was untouched. Completely untouched, as if the war hadn’t happened at all. No cracks in the walls, no patchwork repairs. There were crystal vases, paintings, beautifully kept carpets. Charon had lived more than a hundred years, maybe more than two, and he had never, ever seen a place so perfect before. Like a time capsule.  
  
He wandered through into the living room. It was eerie, really… the pristine sofas, the pool table, the polished wood of the balustrade… It was like something out of a lost memory. Familiar, and yet unfamiliar. And it spoke of incalculable wealth.   
  
The ghoul Deegan appeared at the top of the stairs, and smiled down at Sloan with a warmth that made Charon scowl. This was the Hancock problem. It made others think they had some sort of chance with her, some sort of _right_. Hancock was a special case; he had position, power, money. Other ghouls should not be smiling at her. Not like _that_.  
  
“Deegan! My man.” Sloan grinned at him as he came down the stairs, and stepped forward. “Good to see you in one piece! You had me worried there. Last time I saw you you didn’t look so hot.” She reached out to clasp his forearm in a friendly grip.  
  
He gave her a warm smile. “Nothing a few stimpaks couldn’t fix, Miss Sloan. Thank you for coming.”  
  
“You know I’d do anything for one of your hot showers, Deegan.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You know my guy Charon?”  
  
“We met at the bar,” he said, giving Charon a careful nod. “I know him by reputation.”  
  
“Wait, really?” She glanced over her shoulder at him with a contemplative expression. “You didn’t tell me you had a _reputation_. I’m intrigued.”  
  
Charon held her gaze, and fought against the cold, heavy feeling in his chest.  
  
“Ghouls have long lives, remember,” Deegan was saying. “News has time to get around.”  
  
She flashed him a grin, and turned her attention back to Deegan. “So what _is_ his reputation?” she asked him.  
  
Deegan hesitated. “As a man to be feared.”  
  
“Ooh. I like the sound of that.”  
  
He shot Charon a look that was somewhere between wary and apologetic. Wary he was used to; apologetic, not so much.   
  
“I’m not sure you should,” Deegan said. “He’s done some bad things for some bad people. Very bad things.”  
  
Charon’s lip curled, and he bared his teeth. “You think I wanted to?”   
  
“Try not to hold it against him,” Sloan said in a thin sort of voice, and rested a hand briefly on Charon’s armour. “He does what he’s ordered to do. He has to. I don’t think the bad people waste their time asking what he thinks about it all.”  
  
Deegan gave her an even nod. “Understood. You did ask.”  
  
“I know.” She reached out to squeeze Deegan’s arm. “Thanks, Edward. I appreciate it. So… where’s the boss?”  
  
“In his lab,” Deegan said, looking up the stairs with an almost affectionate expression. “He asked me to take care of it. Would have told your friend here, but I didn’t know whether I could trust him.”  
  
“You can. He’ll pass your messages on.”  
  
Deegan nodded, apparently satisfied, and his expression sharpened as he got down to business.  
  
“Nothing interesting, I’m afraid,” he said, folding his arms. “Emogene has disappeared again.”  
  
Sloan rolled her eyes, and sighed. “And _that_ will be why Magnolia wanted a week off.”  
  
“She’s back in Goodneighbor?” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I went to see if I could find her, but she wasn’t in the Third Rail, or the hotel. Jack needed me back here, so I thought I’d see if you could track her down.”  
  
“She and Magnolia have probably gone off somewhere together. Maybe Diamond City… All I know is that Mags won’t be in Goodneighbor. But if she’s going to be back in a week, I imagine Emogene will be too.”  
  
Deegan huffed an exhale. “And if she’s not, you’ll go looking for her? She thinks avoiding me is some sort of game, and Mrs Cabot gets very… insistent. Especially now…”  
  
“I understand.” Her gaze flicked up to the empty landing at the top of the stairs. “How _are_ the Cabots?”   
  
Deegan sighed. He took off his cap, and ran his hand back over his head.   
  
“Tiring. They have some serum left, but they’re trying to make it last. It’ll be a few months.”  
  
“Can’t really blame Emogene for wanting to make the most of the time she has.”   
  
“No.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
Deegan shrugged. “They had more time than most people get. It’ll just… be tough to see them go.”  
  
She nodded. “Yeah. I get that.” Her mouth quirked to one side, twisting into a smile. “So. Can I have a shower now?”  
  
Deegan folded his arms, and smirked. “Payment upon completion of task, not before.”  
  
She laughed. “You’re a tease, Deegan. Fine. But I’m going to be in there for an hour.”  
  
She was subdued on their walk back to Goodneighbor.  
  
“You know him well?” Charon asked her. “Deegan.”  
  
She shrugged. “Not as well as I’d like. He found me at Bunker Hill one day, asked me if I wanted a job. I went to find this serum for his boss Jack. There was this whole thing at the old psychiatric hospital up north of the Slog, and it didn’t end ideally. The family are dying. Edward’s been with them a long time, so…. Anyway. I hope he keeps the house running, when they’re gone. I’ll have to scrounge some stuff to trade him for hot showers. The water pressure on those things is _orgasmic._ ”   
  
Charon just grunted. In no way did he want to think about her in a hot shower, all… wet and… He shook his head rapidly to dispel the images in his mind, and felt her eyes on his face. He glanced down at her, hoping she couldn’t read minds.  
  
“You know, that’s two people this week who’ve tried to warn me that you’re dangerous,” she said, amusement in her voice. “Is there something I should know?”  
  
Charon felt as if a rock had just lodged itself in his throat. He swallowed, and shook his head.  
  
“No. They heard stories, that’s all.”  
  
“You killed people? For your employers, I mean. Different from the sort of thing you do with me.”  
  
“Yes.” His voice was tight, and he looked away. “Killed, and worse. Sometimes they deserved it. Usually they did not. Nothing I could do about it.”  
  
“I know.”   
  
“Ahzrukhal wasn’t the only employer I killed as soon as I had the chance. Deegan, and the chem trader, they’re just… trying to protect you.”  
  
He heard her hum in amusement.  
  
“Protect me? That’s what I have _you_ for.”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. “You are not taking this seriously.”  
  
“Why would I? You just said yourself, there was nothing you could do about it. I know that, even if they don’t.” She nudged him with her elbow.   
  
“That is the point.” He sighed, and pushed a hand back through the remnants of his hair. “I should have warned you. My actions… You may be associated with things you would rather not be. It may cause problems for you. I had hoped my reputation had not carried this far,” he added.   
  
She turned, holding a hand against his chest to stop him. She waited until he looked down at her.  
  
“Charon,” she said. “You work for _me_. Okay? If people confuse me with some other employer, I will put them straight.”  
  
He nodded, and she smiled.   
  
“That’s settled then.” She turned away, and clicked on the radio on her pip-boy. “Let’s see if those guys we took down yesterday have been missed yet.”  
  
The radio crackled to life.  
  
 _< <This is the Shroud’s headquarters? So you must be the Silver Shroud’s little friend.>>_  
  
There was a muffled sound, and a crack, and Sloan’s eyebrows rose.  
  
“Wait, what? What’s going on? I don’t remember this episode.”  
  
 _< <If you want to see your friend alive, Shroud, Meet me at Milton General Hospital.>>_ Another voice broke in, higher, charged with fear. _< <Don’t do it Shroud! It’s a trap! Save yourself!>>_ A scuffling, followed by a gunshot, and the second voice cried out in pain. _< <Oh my god. Do it, Shroud! Do it! My knee!>>_  
  
Charon growled to himself. That little coward.  
  
 _< <Tick tock, Shroud,>>_ came the first voice again. _< <Don’t keep me waiting. We’ve got business that needs finishing.>>_  
  
Sloan’s face had gone stiff, and when the recording began to repeat she let out an outraged shriek and turned to kick the side of a rusted-out car.  
  
“They took — they took _Kent!_ They fucking took Kent! I’m gonna — I’m — _Fuck!_ ”  
  
“This is your friend?”  
  
She turned back to him, her eyes flashing. “Charon, we are going to _kill_ this fucker. He took Kent! My little buddy! I am going to _inflict violence!_ ” She grabbed his arm and pulled him along with her. “Come on. We’re going to see Hancock.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“If this is Sinjin, then I need his advice. I want to know what I’m walking into.”  
  
Her jaw was set, her grip firm on his sleeve, and Charon lengthened his stride to keep pace with her.  
  
“This man is the one who sends you on your… escapades? When you dress up?”  
  
She nodded, and then sighed, slowing just a little and releasing his sleeve.   
  
“He’s just a sad old ghoul who misses the old world,” she said, rubbing her hand on her neck as she climbed up a pile of rubble. “He wants to make Goodneighbor a better place. To make _the world_ a better place. Give people something to believe in, you know? He came up with the whole idea, to turn someone into the Shroud. He thought there should be someone out there people could believe in. A symbol of hope.”  
  
“Why not do it himself?”  
  
She gave him a wan smile. “Not everyone’s as tough as _you_ are after two hundred years. He’s not a fighter. He’s the sort of guy who would have liked to stay someplace like Diamond City, if they’d still let him in. But they don’t. So he just does the best he can.”  
  
When they arrived back in Goodneighbor she went straight to the Old State House, throwing the doors open and taking the stairs two at a time. Charon shot an apologetic look at the guards inside. The ones who met his eyes just shrugged. Apparently, they were used to her.  
  
He followed her up to find her playing the broadcast to an agitated Hancock.  
  
“Well, you brought him out of hiding, anyway,” he was saying, going to a cupboard and sweeping a number of chems into a pocket. “Good work, sister. Now let’s go take him out.”  
  
She relaxed an iota, and nodded. “You’re coming too?”  
  
“O’ _course_ I’m coming too. You know how I love watching you meting out justice.”  
  
“I’m gonna kill him so hard,” she said, balling her fists by her side.  
  
“I know you are, Sunshine.” He clapped her on the shoulder, and hefted a nasty looking combat shotgun. “Come on. Let’s hit the road.”  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many ghouls in this chapter, gosh


	22. Mentats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock thinks his travelling companions look a liiiittle on edge.

Hancock in Goodneighbor was one thing. Hancock on the road was another.  
  
He seemed freer, somehow — which was bizarre, as he had seemed pretty damn free to begin with. Perhaps the responsibilities of being mayor weighed on him. Assuming there _were_ responsibilities of being mayor. Charon was not convinced that there were, unless they involved cultivating chem addictions and collecting caps.   
  
He hadn’t known what to expect from him, on the road. In Goodneighbor he was in his element; he made sense there, surrounded by his people. Outside, Charon found him difficult to parse. He was the same person, and yet… It was almost as if he toned himself down within the confines of Goodneighbor. Out here he was louder, angrier, happier. And he was absolutely smitten with Charon’s mistress.  
  
He hadn’t really seen them together before. Only in the bar, where Hancock wore his position like a mantel. On the road they were equals, inseparable, and openly affectionate. True, they seemed to have enough respect for Charon’s presence that they kept their hands largely to themselves, but even when they weren’t touching there was an almost tangible connection between them. It was something Charon did not really understand. He still found physical contact between them surprising, even disturbing, to the point where he began to wonder if he was as prejudiced as the humans of Diamond City. Was this something he had internalised? When? Why? Or had he always felt this way?   
  
He remembered, very long ago, the revulsion with which he’d considered his own hands. Torn, scarred, tendons visible here and there, nails missing. Like a corpse’s hands. He couldn’t shake the idea that a ghoul’s touch tainted her in some way. That she should be horrified by it. _He_ was horrified by it.  
  
And the way they looked at one another… that bothered him. He knew they were _fucking_ , that clearly there was some affection they held for one another, but he hadn’t realised quite how far that affection went. Theirs was a genuine and serious relationship. He’d never seen that before, between a ghoul and a human. It was difficult to process. And how long had this been going on? She had only been in this century for seven or eight months. They didn’t see each other for weeks at a time. How well could they possibly know one another?   
  
It confused him. Gnawed at him. Frankly, he would have preferred to leave Hancock back in Goodneighbor.  
  
They had left the settlement at once, despite it being late in the day, stopping only to pick up a couple of things Sloan had left in their room at the Rexford. The sun began to set on the road south, and eventually they veered off to make camp in an old two-story house that was still mostly in one piece. The night was warm, and they picked their way up the stairs to sit in a haphazard half-circle and munch dandy-boy apples and cram.  
  
“I don’t like stopping,” Sloan admitted. She hadn’t eaten much, just picked at her apples; she had ignored the cram entirely.  
  
“We’ll get him back,” Hancock told her. “They only got him to get to you. No point in killing him until you get there. It’d spoil the fun.”  
  
“Fun?” Charon bared his teeth at him.  
  
“Fun for them, Ferryman. Not for us.”  
  
 _Ferryman._ Not a new nickname, but it had been a long while since he’d heard it. So, Hancock thought he was fucking witty. Fantastic. Still… the mistress was fond of him. It would not be wise, or appropriate, to actively antagonise him. Charon frowned, but attempted conversation.   
  
“Who is this Sinjin?” he asked.  
  
“Sinjin…” Hancock stretched his arms above his head until his spine cracked. “This guy has his fingers everywhere. All the low-lives Sunshine here’s been taking out for Kenny-boy belonged to him. He takes two-bit raider outfits and he makes them… scary. Raiders are ruthless, but Sinjin, he’s in a whole different class.” He leant back on his elbows, and huffed a lungful of air out through the hole where his nose had been. “Levelled some farms, napalmed his own men to end a couple of enemies. That’s us now, by the way. His enemies.” He smirked. “Aside from his dark deeds, nobody knows nothing. He’s a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.”  
  
“Why become his enemy?” It seemed foolish, when so little was known about the man.  
  
“I was already his enemy. You think he ain’t been gunning for the guy who runs Goodneighbor?” He chuckled. “He’s already had his men on my turf. Problem is that if he’s not dealt with, in a couple years it may take an army to end him. You and Sunshine did me a favour taking those guys out, and it brought him out of hiding. Now we just gotta finish the job.”  
  
“You _asked_ her to do this? Knowing how dangerous this man was?” He shot a glance at Sloan, who looked amused.  
  
“Sure.” He shrugged. “What? It ain’t like she can’t handle herself. You took ‘em out fine, didn’t you? So why’re you complaining?” He grinned. “Don’t worry. Once Sinjin’s dead, you’ll get paid.”  
  
“I do not get paid. _She_ gets paid.”  
  
“Sure, she’ll get paid. But so will you. You did the work, you get paid.”  
  
“No, I — I do not own things.” He could see Hancock wanted to say something, and he curled the scarred remains of his lip. “We are not in Goodneighbor now. Save your platitudes about _freedom_.”  
  
Hancock frowned, and looked over at Sloan.  
  
“I know, I know.” She sighed, and picked at her bootlaces. “Look, I don’t like it either, but there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it at this point.”  
  
“There’s no way you can…” He danced his fingers vaguely through the air. “You know. Fix things?”  
  
“I’m working on it.” She tilted her head to one side, then the other, stretching out her neck. “I mean, I studied some contract law; it’s not my forte or anything, but if there’s a way out of it, I’ll find it. Honestly though, it’s locked up pretty tight. He signed it; the deal’s been made. But the real problem is that even if I do find something like plausible grounds, it’s not like I can get a judge to override it. Am I meant to argue with the damn thing? I don’t even know how it would work.”  
  
“It’s just… it’s like _slavery_. No one should _own_ a person.” He made a face.  
  
“I own his contract, not him. You know that. But I get it. It’s just that the only way to get rid of it is to sell it or give it to someone else.” She gave Hancock a serious look. “He’s got centuries of killing experience, and he is _really_ good at it. You know the kind of damage he could do if he ended up with someone like Sinjin. And Sinjin would not be a nice employer.”  
  
Hancock grimaced. “Yeah. Better you than someone else. But still…”  
  
“Are you done talking about me as if I was not here?” Charon scowled at him.  
  
“Sorry,” Hancock said. “I just hate this shit. Makes my skin crawl.”  
  
Sloan shuffled a little closer to Hancock, and bumped her shoulder against his.  
  
“I try to avoid the whole issue by just not giving him any orders," she said, "but you’d be surprised how often you use the imperative without thinking about it.”  
  
“Can’t you just… rebel?” Hancock grinned at him. “What happens if she tells you to do something and you just don’t do it?”  
  
Charon bared his teeth. “Pain.”  
  
He looked surprised, even curious, as if he wanted to test this out. Instead he waved a hand, dismissing whatever idea he’d had, and reached over to tug on a lock of Sloan’s hair.  
  
“Chem break?”  
  
“Sure,” she said, “I could use a little something to take the edge off. Save me worrying all night. I won’t be able to sleep. You know I found some overdrive the other day?”  
  
“No shit? That stuff’s hard to come by.”  
  
“I figured we’d save it for Sinjin.”  
  
“Good call. Hey, you ever come across any X-cell? I heard it was big on the black market before the war.”  
  
“Oh, that stuff? Yeah, there was a huge demand for it, but not much actual stock, so people made a ton of money. Our firm defended a guy who was up for distribution. Never tried it, though. You get kicked off the Bar for that sort of thing. Everyone was chewing mentats studying at college, but they test you, so it was a gamble. Other than that, only ever used chems in the army, and X-cell was never in official use. Addiction rates were too high.” She smiled at him. “If I find any, I’ll bring it to you.”  
  
“What about tonight’s ride?” He pulled a few jars and packets from his coat pockets. “What’ve we got… buffout, mentats, med-X…”  
  
“Got any grape mentats?” She leant forward, her elbows on her knees. Her eyes were sparkling.  
  
He tossed a packet to her with a grin. “Babe, you know I got you covered. I _love_ it when you’re giggly.” He popped a mentat himself, and looked across at Charon. “You want anything, big man? Let me guess… a buffout guy, right?”  
  
“When necessary,” he said. “Not for fun.”  
  
“Well, what _is_ your ride of choice? My treat.”  
  
He shook his head. “I will keep watch.”  
  
“Then here.” He tossed him a small tin. “Berry mentats. If anything moves out there, you’ll see it.”  
  
Charon looked at the tin sceptically. “And the downside?”  
  
“No downsides, Ferryman. Makes you smart as hell, too. You never had ‘em before?”  
  
His lips pulled back from his teeth. “No one wastes chems on me unless they’re testing them.”  
  
“I ain’t wasting them either; I’m donating them to a good cause.” He waved a magnanimous hand. “Go on, they’re good for sentries. Plus you’ll be able to keep up with our scintillating conversation.”   
  
Charon said nothing, but Hancock seemed unfazed. He stretched out on his back, hands behind his head, and Sloan shifted to lie at right angles to him, her head on his chest as a pillow. After a moment, his hand drifted down to start playing with her hair, winding a lock around a finger and then letting it slip away.   
  
She gazed at the ceiling as if she could see through it to the stars. “You ever have jet and a mentat at the same time?” she asked. “I swear I could hear the heartbeat of the universe.”  
  
Hancock gave her a surprised look. “You too? Those weird silences, right?”  
  
“I think it has something to do with physics. _Big_ physics, like gravitational waves and space-time and all that shit.”  
  
Charon watched them for a moment, and then looked down at the tin in his hand. He had been a guinea-pig for poorly-manufactured chems, and he’d been used to test experimental drugs, but few employers had given him something that might actually help him in a fight, let alone something to get him high. Drugs were, for him, a danger and a threat. Hancock was a chem-head and that made him wary, but Sloan trusted the man, very obviously, with her life. And berry mentats _were_ meant to be perceptive aids, especially in the dark.   
  
Charon stared at the tin for a long moment, and then opened it. He took one of the pills, and slipped it under his tongue.  
  
“Tell me something, Sunshine,” he heard Hancock say. “Tell me something _smart._ You’re good at smart.”   
  
“Okay. Okay, like, you know — okay, so —” She broke off into quiet giggles, the mentats having apparently kicked in. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Okay. Everything is made of atoms, right? But atoms are mostly space. You have a tiny, tiny point in the middle and then these spheres of electrons, and electrons are so small they barely have a spatial existence. But the thing is that all electrons appear exactly the same. And then you have positrons, which are like electrons if an electron was moving backwards through time.”  
  
Hancock was silent for a moment. “You _what?_ …Maybe I need more mentats for that one.”  
  
“Wait wait wait, I’m not done!” She giggled to herself again. “So there was this physicist, back before my time, and he proposed that there was only one electron in the whole universe. It was just the same electron, that was also every positron, just moving backwards and forwards through time. So every electron in me and in you and in the ground beneath us is exactly the same electron.”  
  
“What the _fuck_.”  
  
“As far as I know it’s not true, because of quantum or something, but fucking _spacetime,_ right? Physics is weird.”  
  
Charon’s eyes caught on the movement of Hancock’s hand, and it was suddenly _fascinating_. It was as if something loose in his mind had tightened up. Everything was heightened, somehow. He could _see_ things. The way Sloan’s chest rose and fell as she breathed, the way each strand of her hair fell over the others as Hancock’s fingers moved through it. Like each movement was picked out in glowing light.   
  
“These mentats are good,” he admitted.  
  
“Told ya you’d like ‘em. Have some more. I got you covered.”  
  
“Okay, okay, I got another one,” Sloan said, the same breathless excitement in her voice as before. “This one’s my favourite stoned-philosophy thingy of all time, okay?… So we’re on earth, and out there is space, right?”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Except we’re in space too. Earth’s just one planet among billions. We’re in outer space. We have this tendency to separate ourselves from Out There, like we’re not a part of the universe at all. We call things “man made” versus “natural” as if we’re not a part of nature. But we are. We’re part of nature. We’re part of the universe. _Everything_ is.” She raised her hands above her, fingers dancing through the air in a way that had Charon entranced. “Every atom in our bodies is an element that came into being as a star was dying. That’s the only way they’re made. We’re made from exploded stars. We are stardust.”  
  
Hancock’s fingers stilled in her hair.   
  
“That’s beautiful.”  
  
“I haven’t reached the best part yet. We used to be stars, and now we’re alive. We’re not, like, separate entities, marooned somewhere we don’t belong. We’re a part of it, a part of the tapestry, a part of _everything_. We’re expressions of the universe. So is everything, every planet, every tree, every drop of rain. But the cool part is that we’re _aware_ of that. We’re aware of ourselves. We’re aware of the world around us. We can _study_ it. We look at the stars we came from and give them names, we study the elements that make up our bodies, we try to understand everything from the great swirl of galaxies down to the intricacies of quantum mechanics. We are the universe’s way of knowing itself.”  
  
Charon and Hancock were silent for a long moment.  
  
“That,” said Hancock at last, “is some deep shit.”  
  
“I told you it was my favourite,” she said.  
  
They drifted off to sleep, after a while, and Charon went to stand at the window, looking out at the night.  
  
His buzz had faded, and he almost missed the way movement had lit up in his mind. He was tempted to take another, but no. It would be easy to become dependant on such a crutch. He must be always perceptive, not just when he had chems in his blood. Still, a useful tool. He had heretofore associated chems mostly with addicts and raiders, but he had to admit to himself this was largely because those were the people he spent time around.   
  
Sloan’s pip-boy started beeping before dawn, and Charon turned to see her switch on her light and sit up, rubbing at her face. Hancock pushed himself up onto his elbows, his face relaxing into a smile as he looked up at her.  
  
“Well, look at you,” he said quietly. “I must still be dreamin’.”  
  
She smiled at him, and bent over to press a kiss against his temple.  
  
“You’re sweet. Come on, light of my life. We’ve got a sidekick to rescue.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus begins the long, slow process of Charon getting used to Hancock. I have MANY THOUGHTS about how different they are as people. Their perspectives, beliefs, personalities and life experiences are massively different and occasionally at odds, so from a writing perspective they are a lot of fun to explore. I also *adore* Hancock and his personal angsts. He will be sticking around for quite a few chapters. (Alas for poor Charon, who would rather he didn't.)
> 
> Some of Hancock's lines about Sinjin are lifted from in-game. So's the one he says when waking up, and ohhh lord, when I first heard that line I stg I fell in love all over again. 
> 
> The "one electron universe" hypothesis is John Wheeler; I first heard it on QI and thought "what the actual fuck". No idea where I first came across the "we are the universe's way of knowing itself" stoned philosophy but I wouldn't be too surprised if that one originated with Carl Sagan, it's his sort of thing.
> 
> So! Next chapter might be a bit of a wait because tbh I hate it with my entire soul and want to set it on fire. It needs some work. And I keep getting distracted by other, better chapters that just need a bit of *tweaking*.


	23. Sinjin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shroud meets her nemesis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am still not happy with this chapter but WHATEVER, IT'S DONE. The sooner I post it, the sooner I can post the *next* chapter which I am much happier with
> 
> Anyway 99% of the Sinjin/Shroud lines are from in-game. I was tempted to skip over them but I decided the chapter was a bit flat without them. Also I can't remember the layout of the hospital pls forgive errors.

Sloan changed into her Silver Shroud costume before they headed out into the street. It seemed a little in bad taste to Charon, until he reflected that Sinjin might not even know who she was, if she had kept up this comic book charade with every minion she had killed. Sinjin had demanded the Shroud’s presence on that broadcast, not Sloan’s. Without the costume, they might not stand a chance of saving the hostage.  
  
She and Hancock seemed to know where they were going, and they stuck to the road as they travelled south. When the ruins of a town appeared on the horizon they slowed, and Sloan crouched to scout the place out with the scope of her sniper rifle. Eventually she took a shot, and there was a distant, but emphatic, explosion.  
  
“Super mutant suicider?” Hancock asked.  
  
“Yep. Looks like a few of them.”  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Four, maybe more. A bunch of others there as well. I’m going to try to pick the suiciders off before we get close.” She smirked to herself as she looked down the scope. “Boom.”  
  
“Boom?” Charon raised a hairless brow.  
  
“Sunshine likes explosions.” Hancock chuckled to himself as he lit a cigarette. “Ain’t that right, love?”  
  
“I confess, I think they’re one of the few silver linings of this century. Aside from the company, I mean.” She shrugged. “I know it’s childish, but there’s something thrilling about watching a small bomb go off, especially knowing it’s not doing any serious damage. It’s… therapeutic.”  
  
She managed to bring most of the super mutants down before they even reached the town. The stupid creatures ran in circles searching for them each time she put a bullet through a skull or into one of the mini-nukes the suiciders carried, but none thought to look down the road, and there were only a couple of brutes lurking around by the time they’d reached the place. They were tough fuckers, nevertheless, and by the time they were finished with them Charon had some grudging respect for Hancock’s talent with a shotgun.  
  
The hospital was in the centre of town. Sinjin and his men had managed to get the generator running, and the lights and even most of the elevators were still functional. The entryway was empty, but raiders’ voices drifted from other floors, and they moved with a degree of stealth. Sloan took point with her silenced pistol, preferring to take down as many as possible without alerting the others. Charon approved. Sinjin had almost an army of raiders here, spread out through the hospital, and taking them down quietly was a better option than an all-out assault. Hancock looked more focused than Charon had ever seen him, and he wondered if he had taken something like a mentat or whether he was actually sober for a change. The man was brutal with a gun, but in these tight hallways he used a knife, quick as a snake and unhesitating.  
  
They felled all they could find, and as they waited for an elevator to take them down into the basement of the hospital Sloan turned to Charon, nibbling on the inside of her lip.  
  
“I have an order,” she said.  
  
Hancock made a face. “Come on, really?”  
  
“A necessarily evil,” she told him, with something of an uncomfortable expression.  
  
“Yeah, but… still…”  
  
“I don’t give them unless I have to,” she reminded him, and turned her attention back to Charon. “We’re going to try to save Kent,” she said. “It’s important that you don’t… I don’t know, go into protection mode or something before we know he’s safe.”  
  
Charon nodded. “Go ahead.”  
  
“Okay.” She took a breath. “Charon, once we find Sinjin, or Kent, don’t make a move until I say so.” She paused, her forehead furrowing. “Is that… enough?”  
  
“Enough.”  
  
“This shit is really necessary?” Hancock asked as he led the way into the elevator.  
  
“Yes,” Charon told him. “The prime directive says ‘protect the employer at all costs’. The costs in this situation are not acceptable. She must override it with an order.”  
  
“Would you kill _me_ to protect her?”  
  
“Yes. Without hesitation.”  
  
Oddly enough, he did not appear to be perturbed by this.  
  
“What about if protecting her would kill _you?_ ” he asked thoughtfully.  
  
 “Most employers have deemed that cost acceptable.” He shrugged, and folded his arms. “There is no clause of the contract that allows me to disobey an order for my own protection. Only one that prohibits physical violence on the part of the contract holder.”  
  
“So you have to do it anyway? Even if you hate the guy?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Your life is fucked up.”  
  
“I am aware of this.”  
  
The elevator dinged as it reached the basement, and they levelled their guns, stealing slowly down the hall. Sloan started, and clapped her hand across Charon’s chest. He stopped, and looked down at her in silent question until she bent and disarmed a frag mine.  
  
“They know we’re coming,” Hancock growled. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get the jump on any more of ‘em.”  
  
“I know,” she said, sidling up to the corner and peering down the hall. “I guess there’s not a lot of point in staying quiet, huh?”  
  
They inched along regardless, disarming mines and traps as they went. They alerted a couple of raiders when Sloan put a bullet in a third’s head, and instead of opening fire they turned and bolted down a hallway.  
  
“Leading us into their trap,” Hancock said with not a trace of concern in his voice.  
  
“Maybe they’re just scared of me?” She grinned at him, and they followed the raiders.  
  
They found no others as they moved slowly through the halls. Any more must have followed the first couple as they fled. Finally they came to a pair of double doors, their windows blocked with masking tape. There were gaps enough for Sloan to peek through, and she craned her neck from beside the door to get a better view.  
  
“He has a gun to Kent’s head,” she whispered. She was chewing on her bottom lip, and reached for her pack. “I’m going to try to talk the rest of them down. There are too many to risk an open fight. He’s been waiting for this, so I imagine Sinjin will want to gloat. But if I don’t kill him with the first shot, I think Kent is dead.”  
  
“Spike thrower?” Hancock asked her as she dug through her pack.  
  
She pulled out a heavy, nasty looking gun and slid what looked like a railroad spike into its chamber.  
  
“Spike thrower.”  
  
Charon did not lust after objects. He had no desire for riches, for fine clothes or art or whatever the hell it was people spent their caps on. But if he were asked to identify something in his life that gave him true, uncomplicated pleasure, he would have said that happiness was a warm gun. Fighting with a well-maintained weapon, having it work as an extension of his body… it was… satisfying. His shotgun had been a companion for decades; he knew every inch of it by sight and by touch. Only rarely did he see an object that truly drew his attention.  
  
But _this gun_. Charon had never wanted something more in his life.  
  
“That shoots _railroad spikes?_ ” he asked, bending down to get a better look at it.  
  
“Yup. Has about the range of a sawed-off shotgun, but if you’re close enough it’ll smash a hole right through someone, armour and all. Takes a few seconds to charge up a shot, though, so it’s not as easy as a combat shotgun if you’ve got a number of enemies around. You really only want to have to use it once. And it’s noisy as all hell.”  
  
Charon tore his eyes away from the gun to peer through the door.  
  
“There are a number of enemies here,” he pointed out. “Even if you kill him with the first shot, you cannot expect his men not to retaliate.”  
  
“We play our cards right, and they won’t,” Hancock told him. “She’s got ‘em running scared, and if she kills him, they’ll scatter. The Silver Shroud’s a boogieman to Sinjin’s people. To a _lot_ of shitheads in the Commonwealth. Just don’t crack a smile when she uses all the superhero lines, or we’re fucked.”  
  
Charon nodded. “Noted.”  
  
They took point on either side of the door. Sloan stood in front of it, adjusting her hat, and then took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she exhaled. After a moment or two she opened them, and with a swoop of her coat she strode through the doors.  
  
Sinjin was _big_. Charon was tall, and he was tough, but Sinjin was nearly as tall as he was and heavier besides. He had a man on his knees in front of him, a gun pressed to the back of his head.  
  
Charon’s muscles tensed, but he could do nothing under the iron grip of the order he had been given.  
  
“There she is,” Sinjin hissed. He lowered his head closer to Kent’s ear. “The thing about cops and robbers, Kent, is that the robbers always win.”  
  
Charon had been unconvinced that a successful overboss would actually be the grandstanding type. It had seemed overly optimistic, but here he was, _gloating_ , like a damn fool. It had been the downfall of many of Charon's employers. Grandstanding always gave the enemy far too much time.  
  
“You see,” Sinjin continued, “the good guy has too many things he cares about. Family. Friends. Little school kids. Maybe some morals. Whereas a bad guy, he just wants the fucking money. So what happens when you start taking apart the bad guy’s empire, when you start ripping him off, when you start _making a fool_ of him, _Kent_ , is you’ve got someone that will stop at absolutely _nothing_ to get back what’s his.” He raised his head. “You hear that, Shroud?”  
  
“Be careful, Sinjin,” she said. She was _smirking_. “Are you sure this is what you want?”  
  
Some of his men shifted, restless, and he noticed.  
  
“Hold, assholes,” he snapped. “Any of you turns heel and I’m coming for you and your family.” He sneered at Sloan. “And you, Shroud, you step any closer and we see what’s inside Kent’s head.”  
  
She was, in fact, remarkably calm. She had been so… he would not have called it _enraged_ , but so...  _impassioned_ when she had discovered Kent had been taken, that he had expected more anger from her now. But everything depended on her taking control of the situation. To do that she had to stay cool, to not let her anger or her frustration so much as show on her face. Charon was deeply impressed. He could not have managed it.  
  
“You shield yourself behind an innocent,” she said. She was smiling, a faint expression that suggested, somehow, that she had already won. “You’re craven, Sinjin. And you shall fall before me.”  
  
“Don’t talk like that!” he snapped. His face contorted, briefly, into something like a snarl of frustration. “Some of these losers think you’re some sort of legend. Like you walked straight out of a comic book. But you and I know, the Shroud’s just you in a flea-ridden costume. You’re weak. You came here because I _brought_ you here. Because you can’t stand that I have your little sidekick at my mercy.”  
  
She cocked a hip, unimpressed.  
  
“I have cut a path through all your thugs,” she taunted him. “Who can say I am not truly the Shroud?”  
  
“Don’t listen men, she’s a phony.”  
  
It was almost funny, the way his people seemed afraid of her. And she’d done, what, just killed a few of their comrades? Worn a costume and left a card behind? How was that any different to what she did without the coat and hat?  
  
“So what’s going to happen is this,” Sinjin said. “I’m going to kill Kent. Then we’re going to shoot the hell out of you. Nothing’s going to be left but paste. Then I’m going to Goodneighbor and I’m going to kill every worthless bastard there. And burn the whole thing down.”  
  
Charon felt a chill. He risked a glance at Hancock. He was alert, his dark eyes sharp and focused, but there was a small smile on his face.  
  
“I am the instrument of justice,” said Sloan, “and I cannot fall. Death has come for you, Sinjin. And I am its Shroud.”  
  
_“Stop talking like that!”_  
  
“Everyone thought the Shroud was a myth, a legend,” Hancock said with a savage grin. “Wrong.”  
  
“It really is the Shroud,” said one of them, a woman with dark facepaint. “It really is. Screw this!”  
  
“Cowards!” Sinjin hissed. But he was losing them.  
  
“Turn against your master now,” Sloan told them in a low voice, “or face my vengeance.”  
  
“Just don’t kill us,” the woman said. “Jesus…”  
  
His minions peeled off, running from him, and Sinjin snarled. But it was bravado. There was fear in his eyes. The fight was already won.  
  
This was the moment. Charon couldn’t attack, not until he had an order from her, but he felt it, felt the moment, the familiar surge of adrenaline. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sloan lift her spike thrower, almost in slow motion, and fire a railroad spike into Sinjin’s head.  
  
It made a wet-sounding crunch as it embedded itself in his forehead. There was a moment when he seemed to realise what had happened, a look of shock spreading across his face as his hands fell to his sides, and then he slumped to the ground.  
  
Kent collapsed into himself, shaking violently. Charon heard Sloan sigh in relief.  
  
“Oh, thank God.”  
  
“And you were worried.” Hancock bumped his shoulder into hers. “Good work, sister. Admit it, the only reason you keep us around is to look pretty.”  
  
She gave him a look somewhere between longsuffering tolerance and deep affection, and spluttered a laugh.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Come help me with Kent. Charon, would you go and make sure the rest of them aren’t a problem?” She paused, as if realising something. “…By which I mean maybe take their guns. Not kill them. Just… clarifying.”  
  
He nodded, and cracked his knuckles.  
  
Sinjin’s men had fled to the back of the room, hiding behind objects and in corners and all of them steadfastly pretending that they had no connection to the dead ghoul in the centre of the room. Their presence here was mere coincidence. They had no idea what was going on. Hostage? What hostage? Miserable little shits.  
  
Charon scowled to himself. A room full of brutal raiders — known killers — and they weren’t even going to shoot them? He understood it was easier this way, that at least now the hostage faced no danger, but it was frustrating that the people who had _participated_ in this would be allowed to escape unharmed. He did have some sense of honour, he knew that it was important to her to keep her word, but if their fates were reversed none of these men and women would have hesitated to break theirs.  
  
The nearest minion, a young woman with a scar across her mouth, swallowed heavily as he walked up to her. She handed him her weapon without having to be asked. Charon pulled the clip from the gun and tossed it into the centre of the room, and with a glower he told the woman to leave before he was tempted to kill her. She fled without hesitation, and he locked eyes with the next raider, who pressed his back up against the wall.  
  
Sloan and Hancock had pulled Kent to his feet, and Charon could hear them talking with him as he tracked down Sinjin’s crew one by one. Trying to encourage him to keep his chin up, for whatever fucking good that would do. He’d sold Sloan out the moment he’d been hurt. Let him wallow in his own fear.  
  
“Ah, Kent, my man,” Hancock was saying. “Why the long face? You got what you wanted.”  
  
Charon paused, and glanced over at them. He understood why _he_ disliked the man, but he hadn’t expected Hancock to toy with him like that. Cruel, almost. Still, maybe he could use a little cruel. He had been careless, thoughtless, sending Sloan off into danger while he sat at home and played pretend. At least this experience would have woken him up a little. Charon shook his head, and snatched a shotgun off a cowering raider.  
  
“I was t-tortured,” Kent stuttered. Charon glanced back over to see Sloan put her hand on his shoulder, steadying him. “I almost died! It wasn’t like the radio plays at all.”  
  
Charon rolled his eyes, and made his way towards a skinny ghoul who was holding his rifle out at arm’s length.  
  
“Hey, who hasn’t been tortured from time to time?” Hancock was saying. “The price of throwing down with The Man is always a few scars.”  
  
Charon growled to himself. That fucking grated. There were times in his own past when he had been strong and held his head up in the face of his punishments, and there had been times when he'd flinched away and hid in the corner like a beaten dog. Kent was snivelling, pathetic, but Charon could understand that response. What he understood less was that Kent was so willing to show it. Weakness, in Charon’s experience, was nothing but an invitation for more pain. There was no point in begging for mercy. Some tormentors even got off on watching someone beg. A man like Sinjin would just have been angered, and that was no better. Angering a captor like Sinjin was just asking for a beating.  
  
But torture was torture. Charon understood what it was to be tortured, and he doubted very much that Hancock had had the same experience. He was too cocky, too cavalier. Kent had been shot, nearly killed, God knew what else. He’d put Sloan in danger with his carelessness, but there was still no reason to toy with him like that. Torture should not be diminished, it should not be _mocked_.  
  
When Hancock left Sloan tending to Kent’s wounds, Charon followed him up the stairs.  
  
“You should not have derided him for being _tortured_ ,” he grumbled in a low voice. “I know the man is weak and cowardly, but —”  
  
“See, _that’s_ the problem.” Hancock shot him a sharp look over his shoulder. “ _You_ think he’s weak and cowardly. _He_ thinks he’s weak and cowardly. Yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have even got involved in shit like this, but he wanted to change the world. _He_ coulda been the hero. He got someone else to be the Silver Shroud because he don’t think he’s got it in him.”  
  
Charon scowled. “He _doesn’t_ have it in him. _Look_ at the man. He is not a hero type of person.”  
  
“You think heroes are born that way? They’re just people who decide something has to be done. He’s halfway there, all he needs is the courage to do it.” He waved a hand, his lacy sleeve flowing through the air. “He threw down with Sinjin and survived. He should be proud. He should be telling this story over drinks at the Third Rail. But he won’t, because _he_ thinks he’s a victim. So that’s what he’ll be.”  
  
Charon looked down at Sloan, her arm around Kent’s shoulders as she helped him towards the stairs.  
  
“Besides,” Hancock added in a soft voice, “he shouldn’t’ve been involved in this shit if he weren’t prepared to deal with the consequences. This could make him better, make him braver, give him a reason to stand up and fight back. _Really_ fight. Instead he’ll go back to hiding in the Memory Den and pretending none of this ever happened. He needs to be pushed. He’s gotta have someone telling him he can do it, because he’s spent too long thinking he can’t.”  
  
“And why,” Charon asked him, “do you care?”  
  
Hancock shrugged. “He lives in my town. Be nice if, when super mutants break down the door, he grabbed a gun and helped out. Ain’t got nothing against those who can’t fight, but the more people who can take care of themselves, the easier it is to protect the ones who can’t. He ain’t old, or sick, or broken. He’s just scared.” He raised his voice. “C’mon, Kent.”  
  
“My leg hurts,” he whined.  
  
“You gonna complain the whole way home?”  
  
Kent hesitated, and straightened a little, shaking off Sloan’s hand.  
  
“I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Atta boy.”  
  
Hancock tossed him a med-X, which he fumbled with and nearly dropped, then stared at like he had no idea what it was for. He cringed as he pushed the syringe into his leg, but when he started back up the stairs, he was moving more easily.  
  
Charon moved to the side to let Kent pass, and fell in behind Sloan. He tugged on her coat, and waited until Hancock and Kent were a few more steps ahead before he spoke.  
  
“It was worth it? Saving him?”  
  
She smirked at him over her shoulder.  
  
“Yes. I know he’s not your sort of person…”  
  
“You saved him and he is still complaining. Ungrateful. Was all of this not his idea?”  
  
She chuckled under her breath. “Yeah, he’s a whiner. Still… I don’t want him to quit. If he quits I’ll kick his ass. I know this was hard for him, but he’ll get over it. He just needs some time, that’s all. With any luck, he’ll toughen up a little.”  
  
Charon nodded, then hesitated, and lowered his head closer to her ear.  
  
“Can I try the spike gun?” he asked her quietly,  
  
He saw the smile tugging on the corner of her lips. She looked back over her shoulder at him, with a sparkle in her eyes.  
  
“Of course.”

 

 


	24. Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing is ever easy.

  
Their journey back to Goodneighbor was quiet. Kent limped along with his head bent, and Sloan kept looking over at him, frowning.  
  
“Hey, Kent,” she said at last, “you want to play ‘I Remember’?”  
  
Kent looked at her, and finally cracked a smile. “All right.”   
  
“’I Remember’?” Charon looked down at her.  
  
“It’s a game the old ones play,” said Hancock, lighting a cigarette. “They sit and reminisce about shit that don’t exist any more.”  
  
“His-Worship-the-Mayor over here, making fun of his elders.” Sloan knocked her shoulder gently into his, and Hancock looked like he was trying not to smile. “Come on, Kent,” she said. “You start.”  
  
Kent tipped his face towards the sky. “I remember… the way the hills looked in summer. Bright green against the blue sky.”  
  
Sloan sighed in a way Charon had never heard before, full of awe and longing, and he shot a look at her. She had closed her eyes.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “God, I miss the green. Leaves on the trees, lying in the grass, the world full of life. I remember Walden Pond in early fall, just when the leaves began to turn.”  
  
“I remember that. You ever go camping there?”  
  
“Yeah. Bottle of something, skinny-dipping as the sun went down.”  
  
“Skinny dipping?” Hancock gave her a serious look. “Sunshine, are you telling me if we find a body of water that ain’t irradiated, I can take you skinny-dipping?”  
  
She grinned at him. “I practically insist.”  
  
Kent chuckled at them. His gloomy mood had lifted, and he slid his hands into his pockets. “I remember movies at the drive-in.”  
  
“Yeah! We always used to catch the Friday night frights.”  
  
“Eh, I preferred the action movies.”  
  
“Figures.”  
  
“Ever see any of those zombie flicks?”  
  
“ _God_ , like, way too many. Ferals give me the absolute willies because of those flicks.”  
  
“I’ll bet.”  
  
She giggled at that. There was a true, relaxed happiness on her face. Charon huffed a quiet sigh to himself. This was why she liked Kent, and Daisy, and ghouls in general. It meant the world to her to talk about the old days. To remember things, to share them with someone who knew it wasn’t all just a dream… It meant she wasn’t crazy, that she wasn’t alone here. Sleeping Beauty awakened to a world all changed and broken.   
  
Charon did not often wish he could remember things. Even assuming there had been some time of happiness, a before-the-contract… one could not miss what one didn’t remember. Did she ever wish he could remember? That he could share things with her like this? He wasn’t sure he had ever regretted those lost memories. Not before now.  
  
“I remember…” She was gazing up into the sky, chewing on her lip. “I remember ice cream at the beach in summer.”  
  
“Ice cream always tasted the best at the beach,” Kent said happily. “Ooh. I remember _cheesecake_.”  
  
“Oh, _god_. Cheesecake! Is life even worth living without cheesecake?” She shot him a haunted look. “How did you survive two hundred years without cheesecake?”  
  
“Memory Den,” he said with a smile. “Relive anything you want. Including cheesecake. Totally worth it.” They walked in silence for a few moments, presumably with thoughts of cheesecake in their heads. “Your turn,” he prompted.  
  
“I remember… the first snowfall of winter.” She looked up at the wisps of cloud. “There’s nothing like a kiss in the snow, or hot cocoa all cosy at the window while you watch the flakes come down and turn the world all white.” She frowned. “Does it snow any more? I didn’t see any last winter. It feels like there are barely seasons now. No flowers in spring, no leaves to grow and fall…”  
  
“It does. It’s pretty rare, and anyway,” he hesitated, “…you wouldn’t like it.”  
  
“Radioactive?”  
  
He nodded, and his expression grew pensive, almost sad. “It is. And it never settles. You never get the whole winter wonderland thing with the snowdrifts and the — you know how you’d steal your mother’s baking tray and go sliding down the street?”  
  
“Having to run off the street every time a car appeared in the distance, and then your mother would scold you for ruining her tray.”  
  
“Heh, yeah.” His smile had grown melancholy. Eventually he said, “I remember when the bombs dropped.”  
  
Hancock flicked the end of his cigarette onto the road, and scowled at him.   
  
“Hey, way to harsh the mood, Kent.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” Kent said, cringing away from him. “I do.”  
  
“I remember too,” Sloan said, her voice low. “I remember the mushroom clouds. They were bright and just… eerie. This moment of silence before the sound caught up with us…”  
  
“I didn’t see. I only heard it. Like… like all the gods had died and fallen from the heavens.”  
  
“You guys are bumming me out. Can we go back to the skinny-dipping?”  
  
She chuckled, and looped her arm through Hancock’s. “All right. Skinny-dipping at Walden’s Pond. There were all these rules about, you know, proper conduct in the campsites, but no one paid all that much attention. Skinny-dipping was forbidden, but I think just about everyone did it at least once. There’s something sensual about being naked in a lake, moon on the water, just enough light to see by. But anyone can go skinny-dipping after dark. It’s more fun if you can see each other. So the trick was managing it _before_ dark without getting caught. People liked to watch the sunset over the water, but most liked to get back to their campsites before dark, so the best time was twilight, just before the light died. You’d run the risk of someone seeing you, but that was part of the fun. You can’t rush a good skinny-dip. You have to take your time. Luxuriate in it. You could spend half an hour there and then when you climbed out of the water in the dark you’d notice someone sitting on the opposite bank. What can you do at that point other than laugh and hope you gave them a good show?”  
  
“You tell the greatest stories. On an unrelated note, how much rad-X can you take before you start getting the shakes?”  
  
She laughed. “I’ll ask Fred Allen if he’s got anything stronger than the usual stuff. Meanwhile, keep a lookout for a body of water that’s fairly private and free of, you know, husks of cars, barrels of nuclear waste, that sort of thing. A trash pile really ruins the mood.”  
  
A bullet whistled by Charon’s head, and he spun, gun already in his hands, as he searched for the source.  
  
“Super mutants!” he shouted a warning, and they darted behind cover.  
  
“Shit.” Sloan flicked off the safety on her rifle. “Kent, you okay?”  
  
“I want to go home,” he moaned, clutching his head in his hands.  
  
“I hear ya.”  
  
Charon saw the calculation on her face, and knew what was coming before she said it.   
  
“No,” he said, but she had made up her mind.  
  
“Charon,” she said, “take Kent back to Goodneighbor, keep him safe until you get there, and then wait there for me.”  
  
His face contorted into a snarl, but he darted across to the car where Kent was cowering, and sized him up. The man would be no help at all, only a hindrance, slowing him down. Not an easy man to keep safe, though at two hundred years old he must at least know how to hide. Still, the faster he got him to Goodneighbor, the better.  
  
Charon reached for him, and tossed him over his shoulder.  
  
“H-hey! What are you doing?!”  
  
“Taking you back to Goodneighbor,” he growled.  
  
“I can walk!”  
  
“This is faster.”  
  
Charon was strong, and Kent was not heavy, but it was still difficult to maintain a run for too long. Kent kept bouncing around. Still, Charon increased his pace whenever he could; moving faster kept the contract happy, though it still whispered its concern in his mind. _Employer in danger. Protect the employer_. Yes. He would much rather be doing that.   
  
It took too long to get to Goodneighbor. Once he made it to South Boston, he found himself lost in the winding streets, unable to find the settlement even when he spotted the spire of the Old State House through the ruins. He had to set Kent back on the ground, and let him lead the way.   
  
“Place is pretty confusing to navigate now,” Kent told him, leading him back west. He moved quickly, but with a great deal of care, keeping his head down and his steps quiet. “With all the raiders’ nests and barricades, the streets change all the time. I hated trying to get around here, back when Goodneighbor wasn’t always a safe place to be. I mean, it’s _still_ not all _that_ safe, but it’s a lot better than it was.” He looked back at Charon, his scarred forehead furrowed with concern. “Look, I get you don’t like me. I’m sure you’d much rather be killing super mutants than having to babysit me. I’m sorry I’m dragging you down.”  
  
“It should not matter to you whether I like you. It is not relevant.” He took a deep breath, trying to quell his irritation. “I must protect my employer. I must obey her commands. Her command means I cannot protect her. This is why I am angry.”  
  
“Angry at me? At her?”  
  
“No one. Just angry.”  
  
Kent nodded. “Yeah. I kinda know that feeling. Come on, Goodneighbor’s pretty close.”  
  
As Kent stepped through the door Charon felt the familiar moment of satisfaction at a task complete, an order fulfilled, before the reality of the next one settled upon him. He ground his teeth. _Wait_ was an easy order; he had ample practice standing still and waiting for something to happen. But _wait_ while he knew an employer was in danger was a great deal more difficult; an exercise in frustration, with the contract twisting itself in his mind. He paced in front of the door to Goodneighbor, frustration growing, until he realised he wasn’t fighting the contract’s anxiety.  
  
Usually he resisted. There was no point in allowing it to agitate him. Instead he would argue with the contract, in a sense, try to tell it — and the part of himself that was tied to it —  that orders were orders, nothing could be done, so why press the prime directive against his mind? Why tighten its chains and flood his veins with adrenaline for a fight he could not join? It wouldn’t stop the sense of conflict in his head, but the attempt at least would keep him occupied, keep a part of his mind clear and focused. The contract’s anxiety was kept distant.  
  
This time was different. This time he was _pacing._   
  
The realisation almost made him panic. He stopped mid-stride, seized with indecision, then turned and walked to the Rexford. He moved quickly, his jaw set, his hands curled into fists.  
  
He was _anxious_ , and he did not want to be anxious. Since when did he worry about employers? _Yes_ , she was different, she was a _friend_ , but she was still an employer and feeling genuine anxiety that rivalled that of the contract… that was new, and it disturbed him. He didn’t mind liking her, he didn’t mind her friendship, but he did _not_ want to grow _attached_ to her. That way lay suffering. Misery. Danger.  
  
He should not be anxious. Employers died, that was what they _did_. All of his employers had died eventually, and it had never bothered him before aside from the contract’s demands and the lash of punishment whenever he failed to protect them. His chest tightened at the idea of that sensation here, now, caused by _her_ death, and he didn’t have time to analyse that reaction before realising that _fuck_ , if she died he would have to go through Diamond City to get his contract. The guards would not like him entering on his own. Perhaps he would need to fight his way in, and then when he had his contract he would hand it to a guard trying to put a bullet in his skull.   
  
Maybe they would kill him on his way in. Maybe he would let them.   
  
In their room at the Rexford he tried to sit, to be still, but he found himself still pacing, one side of the room to the other.   
  
It was two hours before the door opened, and the flood of relief he felt was accompanied by a flash of anger that she had forced him to feel this way at all. He stood rooted to the spot, fists clenching, keeping himself from crossing the room to either shake her or swing her up into a hug, he wasn’t sure which.  
  
She gave him a smile tempered with something like concern, and he bared his teeth.  
  
“Do not do that again,” he snarled at her.  
  
She was taken aback, and held a hand out to the side in a helpless gesture.   
  
“I had to, Charon. You know I don’t give orders lightly.”  
  
“It was a _bad order_.”  
  
“It was _not_ a bad order, and you know it.” She dropped her pack on the bed, followed by her hat, and then turned to face him, one hand on her hip. “You can’t tell me _orders are expected_ and then _yell_ at me whenever I make one. If you’d stayed you’d have been torn between helping me and guarding him. I needed him home safe. You got him home safe.”  
  
“You could have been hurt.”  
  
“Yeah, and that’s why I have stimpaks.” Her eyes were searching his face, her forehead furrowed. “Charon, come on. I’ve killed super mutants before. I’ve had lots of practice, and Hancock was with me. I’m sorry if the contract was giving you a hard time, but I phrased it as best I could. Would it not have been worse if you’d had to protect him while I was getting shot at a few yards away? Maybe not, I don’t know…”  
  
It would have been a great deal worse, to see and hear the danger she was in, and be able to do nothing. Charon grimaced, and nodded.  
  
“Then what’s your problem?” When he said nothing, she drew a little closer, her brows knotted. The irritation dropped from her voice. “Were you seriously worried about me?”  
  
“I don’t — You —” He broke off to rake a hand back through his hair. “You said you belonged to me! You cannot say that and then — and then — ”   
  
“Hey. It’s all right. I’m fine.” She approached him slowly, a hand outstretched as it had been when, long ago now, she had followed him out into the night. “I’m sorry,” she said, her face melting into a soft smile. “But I can take care of myself, Charon. You know that. And you saw Hancock fight. You know he’s good.”  
  
“I do not trust him to protect you.”  
  
“You don’t need to. I protect myself. I did it for months before you came along. I’ve fought raiders and mutants and feral ghouls, deathclaws and mirelurk kings. And I’m not dead yet.” She gave him a long, searching look. “I appreciate what you do. You’re good at it. I feel safer knowing you have my back, Charon, okay? And I realise it’s your _raison d’etre_ and everything, but you don’t have to worry about me. I really do try my best to avoid dying.”  
  
Charon growled at the back of his throat. “Fine,” he said.   
  
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It was important to me that Kent got home safe. He’s a friend and I care about him, and he’s just been through a lot. And — hey — you belong to me, too, remember? You think I was worried? No. I had absolutely no doubt that you would get yourself and Kent back safely. Because you’re good at what you do, Charon. I knew you could protect him. I trusted you to get him home safe, and you did. I appreciate that. Thank you.”  
  
“Don’t thank me, smoothskin. You gave an order. I had no choice. If it were up to me I would have stayed with you.” He sneered. “I can’t even deliberately fail. So do not thank me. I would have let him die.”  
  
She nodded, and there was a softness in her face he did not understand.   
  
“Okay,” she said. She shrugged. “You did what I wanted you to do. I am satisfied with your service.”  
  
She hadn’t spoken to him like that before, so formal. He felt a chill. He’d pushed because he was angry, because he didn’t like feeling like this, and now he’d gone too far across the line.   
  
“I…” He groped for words. “I…”  
  
“I get it. I made you do something you didn’t want to do. If that makes me a shithead, if that makes me just like all the others, then I’m sorry. But I can’t pretend I’m not glad it worked out the way it did.” Her frown softened, just a little. “I didn’t go save Kent only to get him killed by some random super mutant because I couldn’t bear to give an order.”  
  
“Yes mistress,” he said, his gaze focusing somewhere above and to the left of her head. He recognised the fatalistic note in his own voice, and hated himself for it. He shouldn’t be using that with her.   
  
He heard her sigh.   
  
“Do you hate me now?”  
  
He shook his head. “No. I could never hate you.”  
  
“Yes you could,” she said, and the bitterness in her voice surprised him enough that he met her eyes.  
  
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I could. But not for this.”  
  
“How can I make this better?” She cast about. “You want — what do you want? Time, caps, guns? What can I do?”  
  
“Nothing. You did what you were supposed to do. Orders are expected.”  
  
There was an agonised look on her face, and Charon did what he should have done to begin with. He stepped forward and he pulled her into a hug.  
  
He hadn’t bothered to remove his armour and she was still wearing her oversized trenchcoat, but that didn’t matter somehow. She was here and she was safe, her arms tight around his waist, and he tried to ignore the voice whispering its warnings at the back of his mind.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was about time they had a proper fight. 
> 
> Good news: I'm actually making progress with the Sex Scene that's about 20 chapters in the future
> 
> Bad news: I still have no idea how this story is going to end haha kill me


	25. Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road again.

Sloan finished out her week at the Third Rail, and even dragged Emogene back to Cabot Manor by herself to claim her promised hot shower. It was strange, after so long together, to send her off anywhere alone, but Charon had no desire to stand around waiting for her skin to prune, and he allowed himself to trust in her capabilities. She returned with damp hair and pinked cheeks, smelling of coconut and vanilla.   
  
“Shampoo,” she said, answering the question he hadn’t asked. “And _conditioner_. Edward let me steal a couple of bottles. My shower’s cold and the water pressure is shit, but it’ll still be amazing just to be able to wash my hair once in a while. Now it’ll be unmanageable for about three days, wait and see.”  
  
Half an hour later her hair was dry, standing out in a sort of halo around her head. He kept staring at it, until at last she grabbed his wrist, and lifted his hand to slide his fingers into her hair.  
  
He started.   
  
“Soft, right?” She grinned at him.   
  
“Yes,” he croaked. A _lot_ softer than it had been a week ago, when he’d taken comfort in sliding his hand through her hair in the dead of night.  
  
“That’s why I can’t do anything with it, and why it’s defying gravity right now. It has a mind of its own straight after washing. Nice and shiny, though.”  
  
Charon let the silken locks slip through his fingers with a bemused sort of smile.  
  
“You can use some too, if you like,” she said, raising a hand up towards his hair and utterly failing to reach it.  
  
He scoffed. “ _Me?_ No.”  
  
“But your hair’s such a pretty colour!”  
  
“Nothing about me is pretty,” he said, and curled his lip.   
  
“Fine,” she said with a smirk. “It’s a very _handsome_ colour.”  
  
Charon tried to glower at her, but a smile kept tugging on the corner of his lips.  
  
“Stop teasing me, smoothskin. Come on. Are we leaving, or not?”  
  
They paid a visit to the Old State House, and instead of racing up to the second floor Sloan lingered, chatting with the watchmen. Charon leant against the wall to wait. He had only exchanged a few passing pleasantries with the guards himself over the time they’d been here. Charon was not a friendly person, but they seemed to be getting used to him now, and he had grown to respect the way they cared about their town.   
  
One of the watchmen from the barfight was on duty, and grinned at him. Charon gave him an embarrassed nod as they passed, and followed his mistress to the second floor, where he slouched against the door-jam and waited for her to say her goodbyes.  
  
Hancock was waiting for her in the middle of the room, and she went to sling her arms around his neck.   
  
“You smell different,” he said, pressing his nasal cavity up against her temple in a way that Charon found repellent.   
  
She chuckled. “I went to the Cabots’ place. Now Emogene’s surfaced I dragged her off home, and Deegan let me take a shower. I got to wash my hair and everything, _and_ he let me steal a couple of bottles to keep.” Her voice dropped a little. “I guess the Cabots won’t have a use for them for that much longer.”  
  
“They look all old now, or something?”  
  
She shrugged a shoulder. “I only saw Wilhelmina, and she looked older to begin with.” She smirked. “She asked after you. Kind of.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“She looked down her nose at me and said something like ‘I see you haven’t brought Lord Byron with you this time. I won’t have to count the silverware.’” She laughed to herself.  
  
“She called me what? Explain,” Hancock said, raising a hairless eyebrow.  
  
“ _You_ know. Lord Byron. ‘Mad, bad, and dangerous to know’.” She grinned. “She’s not wrong. It suits you.”  
  
Hancock grinned back at her, preening a little. “This Byron guy…”  
  
“Super famous. Shagged his way across half of Europe. Wrote poetry. Scandalised nations, and I mean that literally. He was exiled to Switzerland or somewhere because everyone found out about his torrid affairs.” She smoothed down the shoulders of his coat. “The story goes, they wouldn’t let him keep a pet dog at his university college, so instead he had a pet bear. He wasn’t so much a rule-breaker as the reason certain rules had to be invented.”  
  
“My sorta guy.” He rubbed a hand across his chin. “Maybe I should pay Wilhelmina a visit…”  
  
Sloan cackled. “Don’t harass the poor woman! Anyway, Deegan will toss you out on your ass.”  
  
“He wouldn’t dare.”  
  
“Oh, I think he would. They have a sentry bot, remember.”  
  
Hancock grimaced. “That’s a point. Still, I feel like I ought to pay my respects. Seein’ as she’s dyin’ and all.”  
  
“You leave that poor old woman to die in peace!”  
  
He grinned, and kissed her, and Charon steadfastly averted his eyes. He was not a voyeur, and a ghoul kissing a human was still something that turned his stomach a little.  
  
“So. You leavin’ me?” he heard Hancock say. “Running off to save the world?”  
  
She hummed to herself. “I thought this time I might drag you along with me. I’ve missed you.”  
  
“I thought you’d never ask,” he purred.   
  
Charon ground his teeth. The last thing he wanted was this man following them around the wasteland, putting his hands all over the mistress all the damn time.   
  
It annoyed him that she never asked if he was happy for someone else to join them. She was pleased enough to ask Charon whether he wanted to go somewhere or do something, but when it came to inviting someone else along with them she never seemed to mention it until the last possible moment, let alone ask him how he felt about it. It was wrong to be annoyed — what right did _he_ have to an opinion? — but he could not help himself.  
  
He sulked about this, as Hancock gathered his things, until it occurred to him that none of _them_ had been asked if they were happy for _him_ to tag along. Her friends had all known her for months now, she was _theirs_ , long before she had been his, and Charon had come along without an invitation and attached himself to her, whether they liked it or not. She was stuck with him. _He_ was the interloper, the unwelcome addition. She couldn’t even go to her own home in Diamond City without everyone glaring at her. She’d had to plead Charon’s case with Hancock to be allowed in Goodneighbor with him. If he’d been this much trouble to anyone else they would have sold him weeks ago. He was a parasite.   
  
Hancock went out on the balcony to say his goodbyes to his people, Sloan watching from the doorway with a dreamy smile on her face. Then they left, slipping through the square with a chorus of farewells following them out.  
  
“What will we be doing?” he asked the mistress as the door closed behind them.  
  
She flashed him a grin.  
  
“Who knows?” She threw a hand out, fingers splayed. “We’ll go where the wind takes us! The world is our oyster. If oysters still exist.”  
  
Hancock chuckled. He was slipping some shells into his shotgun, a smirk plastered across his face.  
  
“If someone needs helping, we help ‘em,” he said to Charon. “If someone needs hurting, we hurt ‘em. It’s not hard.”  
  
“I like that philosophy,” Charon admitted.  
  
“It’s gotten us this far.” He flashed him a grin. “We’re gonna get along fine, Ferryman.”  
  
Charon was not so sure. He liked Goodneighbor well enough, but he had been looking forward to the solitude of being out on the road with the mistress again, and the presence of someone else soured his mood. Someone else to take precedence over him, to take his place at her side. He huffed a sigh through the hole where his nose had been, and dropped back a couple of paces.   
  
Hancock could talk about freedom and call him _brother_ all he wanted; it did not make them equals, and Charon did not fool himself that it did.   
  
Sloan was humming cheerfully to herself as they picked their way through the Boston ruins.   
  
“Oooh, what about Bunker Hill?” she asked, turning on one foot to look back at them as she walked. “I haven’t been through there in ages. I’d like to see if Cricket’s around.”  
  
“Chances aren’t great,” Hancock told her.  
  
She shrugged. “I know, but worth a look, right? She’s always got great guns. I owe Charon a new rifle.”   
  
“Okay, sure. Wanna go to that crater afterwards and throw rocks at the ferals?”  
  
“Last time we did that a Glowing One dragged it’s way out of the thing and tried to eat me.”  
  
“We got away, didn’t we?”  
  
Charon growled deep in the back of his throat.   
  
“She does not like ferals,” he said.  
  
“No, really?” Hancock chuckled to himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after her.”  
  
Charon bristled.   
  
“It is _my_ job to protect her,” he said. “You know that.”  
  
Hancock grinned at him again, and touched a fingertip to the edge of his hat.  
  
“You are toying with me,” Charon realised.  
  
“C’mon, lighten up, will ya? She don’t need looking after. Sunshine woulda brought down Sinjin just fine without us.”  
  
“Not that I don’t appreciate the help,” she threw back over her shoulder. She had found a pack of gum from somewhere and was blowing bubbles with the stuff like a child.   
  
When they started across the bridge that separated the two sides of the harbour she threw out a hand, pointing along the inlet.  
  
“There’s a feral down that way,” she said. “Stuck on an island. Just a tiny bit of rock or sand or something. But it’s standing next to this barrel of nuclear waste, so every time I pop the thing it heals right back up again.”  
  
“Good for target practise,” Hancock remarked.  
  
“A waste of bullets,” Charon countered, folding his arms. “Why did you bother? It could not have reached you.”  
  
Sloan shrugged. “Gift of mercy,” she said, pushing herself back off the railing. “They were a person once. …Besides, there might be something good on that island.”  
  
He smirked at her. “You think there is treasure buried under every rock.”  
  
She grinned. “You won’t know unless you look.”  
  
Charon had thought Goodneighbor a scruffy sort of place, but Bunker Hill made it seem almost impressive. The homes were one-room shacks, and most people seemed to just be passing through.  
  
“Bunker Hill’s a trade stop,” Sloan told him. “I don’t swing by often, but it’s great when there’s a whole heap of traders in at the same time. Lots of good junk to buy and lots of caps if you have a lot to sell. View from the tower’s great too.”   
  
They were in luck. Her friend Cricket was here, a scrawny woman with madness in her eyes. They spent a few moments chatting about violence and explosions in an almost blasé tone before Sloan picked out a rifle and passed the woman a frankly obscene amount of caps.   
  
“Too expensive,” Charon said to her with a start. “Get a different gun.”  
  
“I want my bodyguard properly armed,” she said, and tossed him the gun. “Only the best for the men in _my_ employ. Pass me your old one, I can get a few caps back for it.”  
  
He did, and turned the new one over in his hands. It was a good one. Night vision scope, and some extra modifications he couldn’t quite work out. Some sort of double-firing mechanism. Interesting. He would have to add some sort of switch, so he could turn it on and off as needed.  
  
“You like the gun? It’s a good gun,” Cricket said, the skin under one eye twitching. “Overseer’s Guardian, it’s called. Traded for it with Vault 81. Want anything else? Mini-nuke? Come on! No one buys the mini-nukes.”  
  
“Boom,” said Sloan, and they exchanged a grin.   
  
Hancock bent over the woman’s table, presumably to sell her some chems or purchase some ammo, and Sloan drifted outside. Charon followed her, slipping the strap of his new gun over one shoulder.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, “for the gun.”  
  
“You like it? She said it’s a good one.”  
  
“I will need to test it out to know for sure. But it is a good weight, good balance.”  
  
Her face relaxed into a grin. “Good.”   
  
“This is… a gift?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
Charon did not know what to say. He was vaguely aware that gifts were usually reciprocated, and he had nothing for her.   
  
True, he officially owned nothing but his shotgun; she could take the rifle back at any time. But he doubted that she would. He could keep it as long as she lived. Perhaps longer. The next employer would not have to know, although attempts in the past to keep anything he had managed to acquire from previous employers had never worked out in his favour.  
  
 _The next employer._ He had started thinking, off and on, about who would come next. Someone from Diamond City would doubtless sell him, and the people they would sell him to were unlikely to be pleasant. He was growing used to Sloan’s attempts at equality and he cherished them.   
  
And if she wanted equality, then the gift should be reciprocated. He should get her something. That was tricky… he couldn’t spend the caps she had given him on something for her, that would be tantamount to her buying it herself. And he couldn’t earn money working for someone else. He had a few hundred that Hancock had forced onto him for killing Sinjin’s men; it had made him deeply uncomfortable to accept it, but she’d ignored him every time he tried to give it back to her. Regardless, that money wasn’t really his to spend.  
  
The other challenge would be finding something she would like. Trinkets, if her shelves were anything to go by. Nothing that would come close to the value of the gun slung over his shoulder. That was a problem.   
  
“I cannot repay you,” he said at last.  
  
She gave him a look.  
  
“It’s a _gift._ You don’t repay gifts.” She looked puzzled, but after a moment her expression cleared. “Except people don’t give Charon gifts,” she said.   
  
“No.”   
  
“This is a new concept for you.” She pressed her lips together in a thin, sad sort of smile. “You don’t have to return gifts, Charon. Gifts are just for having. I mean, I don’t pay you, it’s the least I can do to get you a new damn gun once in a while.”  
  
“But —”  
  
“Can you just let me do this?”  
  
She was giving him a plaintive look, so he nodded. It still felt wrong to him. Employers did not give him things. Not good things, anyway.  
  
Hancock joined them, whistling tunelessly through his teeth.   
  
“We ready to go?”  
  
“Sure.” She looped her arm through his, and they headed toward the gate.  
  
“So,” Hancock said, slipping a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He cupped his hand around the end as he lit it. “…So a ghoul walks into a bar. Bartender says, we don’t serve ghouls here. The ghoul says, that’s fine. Is the human fresh?”  
  
Charon stared at him as Sloan laughed, until Hancock caught his eye, and grinned.  
  
“It’s a joke, Ferryman. You familiar with jokes?”  
  
“In his defence, it’s a pretty terrible joke,” Sloan said. “ _I_ think you save it with the delivery, but then, I am notorious for having strange tastes.”  
  
“You always love my delivery.”  
  
From the expression on her face, Charon suspected this was some kind of sexual reference, and he grit his teeth, falling back another step.  
  
The sooner Hancock went back to Goodneighbor, the happier he would be.


	26. Deathclaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes encounter Difficulties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone read the last chapter and wondered why nothing actually happened in it, it's because it really only exists to bridge between ch. 24 and this one. We're going "chapter I love" - "chapter I like less but that is nonetheless necessary for one reason or another" - "chapter I love" for the next little while, so please bear with the alternate chapters that are less good. 
> 
> Anyway here is a good one, ENJOY

  
  
They stepped out of the police station, and Sloan gave a satisfied sigh.  
  
“Well, that’s another one down,” she said, “and we have the location of the next—”  
  
She was cut off by a roar, and Charon’s head snapped around to see a deathclaw standing in the street.   
  
Sloan’s face had gone stiff.   
  
“I have a plan!” she said, pulling a nasty looking syringe — psychobuff — and a tommy gun from her pack before dropping it to the ground.   
  
Charon knew the plan. It was a risky one, but it had some merit. He and Hancock hefted their shotguns, and darted around the monster, harrying it as Sloan sprinted a distance away.   
  
“Okay!” she yelled, and they sprang back as she pulled the trigger and a hail of bullets hammered into the animal’s thick hide.  
  
It staggered, but its reptile eyes focused on her, and it was moving far too fast.  
  
Charon gripped his gun and ran, hoping he could reach her before it did. She was backpeddling, her gun still firing, but each time she had to pause and slot more bullets into the chamber Charon felt his panic — the contract’s panic — rise another octave. _Protect._ It was thunder in his mind and acid in his veins. _Protect the employer._  
  
Then her boot caught on a rock, and she fell backwards, her gun still firing.  
  
The deathclaw slashed at her a moment before Charon’s shoulder connected with its side, knocking it away. He fired at it once, twice, but then the contract took control, dragging him away, _protect,_ and he was on the ground beside her, his hands pressed over the gash in her throat.   
  
_Protect the contract-holder._ The words thrummed in his mind, the voice belonging to someone from far away, long ago. _Protect the employer! Savehersavehersaveher!_  
  
Vaguely he was aware of Hancock yelling, the crack of his shotgun, a shout of pain and then the beast’s ferocious growl as it finally fell. He could not look away to see if the thing was dead. He was able to tear his eyes from her neck long enough to glance at her pockets, looking for a stimpak, but there was nothing, he could not find one, she had used them all. The rest were in her pack, too far away, too far to reach. He knew that she would bleed out if he tried. Maybe it was only the buffout in her system that was still keeping her breathing. Soon it would wear off, and then…  
  
He needed a stimpak. He needed a stimpak but she was dying and he could not move his hands.  
  
Hopeless, he looked at her. Not at the gash in her throat or the blood pulsing from between his fingers, but at her face, pale and tired, but somehow, not afraid. She was looking up at him with her large hazel eyes, her breath bubbling in her throat. She looked sad.   
  
“S’okay,” she said. He felt her throat move as she swallowed. “S… s’okay.”  
  
“Mistress,” he hissed at her, “ _do not die._ ”  
  
“S’okay,” she said again. Her lips were red. Wet. “Hancock’ll take care’a ya. ‘N you. Can look after him f’r me.”  
  
“No. You must live. You _will_ live.” She had closed her eyes, and he wanted, desperately, to see that hazel again. “Sloan. Mistress. Stay awake. Stay with me.”  
  
The contract was screaming, screaming in his mind, roaring like a burst dam. It was hard to think, and impossible to move, impossible; the contract kept his hands clamped to her throat, kept her life within her veins.   
  
He was grateful to the contract, for the first time he could remember. As long as it kept screaming, she was alive.  
  
Then a stimpak was pressed against her neck, and there was the sweet, sweet hiss of the syringe and he felt her skin begin to close beneath his fingers.  
  
Hancock dropped to the ground next to them, his breath coming in ragged, damp gasps.  
  
“Got me too,” he said. “Only had one. Do me a solid, big fella, and get some more from our girl’s pack?”  
  
The contract’s thunderous screaming had eased to a dull roar, giving him more room to act, and gingerly he moved his hands from his mistress’s neck. The scabs held. When he was satisfied that blood was not about to resume pulsing from her throat, he scrambled to his feet, running across the square to grab her pack. He pulled a pair of stimpaks from their pocket, and tossed them to Hancock as he returned.  
  
Hancock set a needle against his own neck, where it met the shoulder, and pressed down on the syringe with a grimace.  
  
“God, I hope there’s not a bit of deathclaw talon lodged in there or something.” He prodded at his shoulder, breath hissing through his teeth. Satisfied, he pressed the other stim against Sloan’s neck, and her eyes fluttered open.  
  
She took a few slow breaths before pulling herself into a sitting position.  
  
“ _Jesus._ That was a bit fucking close. I was pretty sure I was going to die there.”  
  
Charon dropped to the ground beside her. They were all breathing heavily, and Sloan took one of their hands in each of hers, and squeezed.  
  
“Thank you.” She swallowed. Her leather jacket was black with her blood. “It’s good to not be dead.”  
  
Charon felt the bizarre urge to laugh.   
  
“It was a _good_ plan,” Hancock told her. “It just, you know… has a couple flaws. Mostly that you can’t see where you’re going when a deathclaw’s rushing towards you. And that you need a gun with a larger magazine.”  
  
“It may need some polishing,” she admitted. “Although in fairness, I’d like it acknowledged that this deathclaw was tougher to bring down than most.”  
  
She pulled herself to her feet, stretching herself out carefully, and then the psychobuff gave out and her legs crumbled underneath her.   
  
“God _damn_ it.”  
  
Charon passed her another stimpak, and she nodded her thanks.  
  
“You guys want to hole up somewhere near here? I think I need to sleep for about twelve hours.” Her eyes wandered over the pool of blood she was sitting in. “Christ, did that all come out of me? No wonder I’m dizzy.”  
  
“We cannot stay here.” Charon shook his head. “There may be more deathclaws nearby. Where there is one, there is often another. A child, a mate. We must move.”  
  
The look of sudden exhaustion on her face was agonising.  
  
“I can carry you,” he offered.   
  
“We can’t stay here?” she all but whined. “We cleared out the police station, it should be safe.”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. If she _wanted_ to stay, they would have to stay, and the contract would be beating at the walls of his mind all night. He could not shake his feeling that this place was not safe.   
  
“What’s your problem, Ferryman?” Hancock asked him. “Voices in your head don’t like that idea?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Charon snarled at him. “They do not.”  
  
Hancock blinked. “What, there really are voices? Hey, I didn’t know.” He held up his hands. “I was making a joke, is all. I didn’t know there actually _were_ voices in your head. I mean I get voices sometimes, but I’m pretty sure it’s just the chems.”  
  
“Metaphor,” he said, his hackles settling. “There are not usually voices. It’s in my blood, my nerves, imprinted in my brain. Orders. We are not safe here. The contract holder must be protected.”  
  
Hancock looked at him, and then at Sloan.  
  
“Is he…?”  
  
“Yeah, he’s all right. Let it be, John,” Sloan gave him a weak smile. “I don’t know how that contract makes him do things, but he can’t fight it.” Slowly, she dragged herself to her feet. “Come on. We’ll keep walking ‘till the head-voices say it’s safe.”  
  
Her wounds were healed, but she had lost a lot of blood, and it was not long before she was staggering with exhaustion. Charon crouched so she could clamber onto his back, and they walked until he judged them far enough away that another deathclaw attack would be unlikely. There had been raiders here, but they were dead now, faces carved with a knife into a sick smile.  
  
“Pickman,” Sloan said from her perch on his back, her voice dozy, slow.  
  
“Who is Pickman?”  
  
“He had the gallery.”  
  
That meant nothing to him, but Hancock seemed to recognise the name, his scarred lip curling in distaste.  
  
“Sick fuck,” Hancock said, straightening from one of the corpses with a card in his hand. “I thought you killed him, sister.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“Well, that’s creepy.” He dropped the card, and dusted off his hands. “Let’s hope these guys are just surprisingly well-preserved. You wanna check upstairs? Good a place as any to sleep, and our friends here can keep the weirdos out.”  
  
“We are the weirdos, mister,” she said, chuckling in a way that was bordering on delirious.   
  
Charon eased Sloan down off his back, and helped her climb up the slope of rubble to the second floor. She really had lost too much blood, and he was beginning to grow concerned. Food and water would help, as well as sleep, but this was one area where stimpaks were of very little use. They healed flesh, even bones if they were set well, but they couldn’t restore blood volume on their own. That took time, water, food. Sloan slumped against the wall, her eyes closed, and Hancock soon joined her, their heads lolling together, almost touching, their fingers intertwined.   
  
A cooking fire was tempting, but it would draw attention, and they had no defences here. Charon was still too on-edge to want to risk it. They would have to eat something packaged, or… wait. He dug into Sloan’s pack, and grinned when his hand closed around a Vault-tec lunch box.  
  
“Hey. Eat.”   
  
He knocked his mistress’s shoulder, and she looked up at him with bleary eyes.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You need to eat some protein, smoothskin. And drink some water. Then you can sleep.”  
  
Her eyes focused on the lunch box he pressed into her hands.  
  
“Is this my deathclaw jerky?”  
  
Her grin echoed his.  
  
They all sat together, chewing on the tough but surprisingly tasty meat as the afternoon darkened. It looked like the promise of rain out to sea, and Charon was glad for the scrap of roof over their heads. He let the others sleep, rebuild their strength, and climbed down to the ground floor to stalk the perimeter. He told himself, as he slid down the rubble, that he needed to check the place was safe, secure. In truth, he had to get away from the smell.  
  
Sloan was still caked in blood. It was on her jacket, her shirt, her skin, matting her hair. She reeked of it, and Charon had to get away, just for a while, to breathe air that wasn’t clogged with copper and death. And, if at all possible, he had to wash his hands. He had tried to wipe off the worst of the blood, but there was still plenty of it dried in the crevasses of his flesh, and it was a punch in the gut every time he looked at them. Perhaps it would have been easier to ignore if he had had something to do, but he was idle, and he couldn’t sit up there with them and the smell of blood without flashes of her looking up at him from the asphalt with sadness in her eyes. It haunted him.   
  
He told himself that it would pass, that it was only the after-effects of the contract’s prolonged screaming in his head. Echoes and reminders that this was not permitted, it must be avoided, the employer must be protected. He told himself these things and he steadfastly ignored the part of his mind that knew, very well, that they were lies.  
  
He was consumed enough with avoiding the images asserting themselves in his mind that it was nearly an hour before he noticed the dark clouds rolling their way in from the coast had begun to flash with a disconcerting green colour.  
  
 _Oh. Oh, no._  
  
He scrambled back up the rubble, and shook his mistress awake.  
  
“We have to go,” he said. “There’s a rad storm blowing in. Fast.”  
  
She groaned, her eyes still closed, and turned her face against the wall.   
  
“But I’m so _tired_. Can’t I just stay here and hope I become a ghoul before I die?”  
  
Hancock chuckled, climbing to his feet and reaching down to help pull her upright.  
  
“It’s a nice idea, Sunshine, but I ain’t willing to bet on those odds. You got any rad-X on you?”  
  
She rubbed her nose, and nodded, crouching beside her pack.  
  
“Some. Enough to see me through the storm, but only if we manage to find some solid walls to put between it and us before too long. If it blows over quickly I’ll be okay. Have enough rad-away to — oh. No. We used the last of it in Goodneighbor and I didn’t think to get any more.”   
  
“God _damnit_.” Hancock pulled his hat from his head and stalked to the edge of the floorboards, staring out at the storm for a moment before he put his hat back on and glared at her over his shoulder. “Next time I pull out.”  
  
Charon’s lip curled. _That_ was an element of human-ghoul relations he had not considered. Revolting. What’s more, it rankled that Hancock was angry at _her_ for this, as if he had not been involved.  
  
“ _Next time_ I’ll remember to get some more,” she was saying.  
  
“You’d better. You rely on scavving too much.” Charon could see the agitation in him as he walked back over to her, shifting on his feet as if he wanted to pace. The energy of the storm was beginning to reach them. “You can’t do that with shit like this, sister. You need to have them with you _all the time_.”  
  
Charon stepped towards Hancock with a growl, and he jumped back, holding his palms aloft.   
  
“Hey, don’t _loom_ at me, Ferryman. I ain’t goin' to _hurt_ her.”  
  
“Do I _know_ that?” He glowered at him.   
  
“Of course you do.” Sloan rubbed her face with both hands and smothered a yawn. “He’s not that mad, Charon, it’s just the storm.” She hoisted her pack, and he immediately took it from her to slip it over one shoulder. She gave him a grateful look.  
  
“It’s the storm and I feel guilty because it’s _my fault_ for being all _radioactive_.”  
  
“It is _not_ your fault. We just need to plan better, that’s all. I’ll keep more rad-away with me. I’ll remember to take a rad-X beforehand instead of realising a bit too late.”  
  
 Hancock scowled, and then sighed.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He gave her the ghost of a smile, and then stalked over to the window to look down the street.  
  
Sloan peered around him. “Shall we start looking for some shelter? I don’t know where there _is_ any around here. Maybe there’s a safe room in the police station….?”  
  
“Too far. The storm’ll be on us in a minute.” Hancock pointed through the broken window, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. Eager to be moving. “There’s one of those blue things down the street, the whachamacallems, Preservation Shelters. I saw it as we went past, didn’t think about it at the time. We can shove you in there.”  
  
“What about you guys?”  
  
He shrugged. “We’ll get wet.”  
  
They slid back down the rubble and fell into step. Sloan was still worn, and was leaning heavily on Charon’s arm. He tried to take the opportunity to hurry her along a little, but her mind seemed elsewhere, like she was still half-asleep.  
  
“What’s it like, when you’re a ghoul? Rad storms, I mean,” Sloan asked them as they slipped along the road to the personal fallout shelter.   
  
“Like… You know how jet makes all your senses turn up to eleven? Like that, but in flashes. It prickles down your skin, makes you stronger, makes you feel alive and drunk at the same time.” Hancock tipped his face up to the sky. “It’s pretty great.”  
  
“I used to love storms, before they came with radiation in them.”  
  
He chuckled. “I used to hate storms, before I was ghoulified.”  
  
“You know they don’t have them further inland? Irradiated ones, I mean. Charon said he’d never seen one before he came here. Maybe one day we can go inland and see a _real_ storm.” A flash of lightning made her wince, and cling to Charon’s arm. “Lightning comes in better colours than green. White and blue and pink and gold.”  
  
“That true?” Hancock looked up at him, and he shrugged.  
  
“True enough,” Charon said. “Rare to see pink, but it happens.”  
  
“So you didn’t expect a storm to hit you with a dose of rads? That must have been a fun surprise.”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. “Not so much. The smoothskin was vexed that I did not wake her in time.”  
  
“Ha! I’ll bet.”  
  
They reached the Preservation Shelter just before the storm. The blue cylinder was locked tight, and Hancock poked at the coin slot.  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“Ahaha, all that time mocking me for collecting old money and now you see my master plan come to fruition!” She fished in a pocket of her bag, pulled out a coin, and slipped it into the slot.  
  
The door opened with a cheerful jingle, and there they left her, clinging to her pack and smiling at them as they closed the door.  
  
Charon slouched against the side of the preservation shelter, electing to take his role as guardian seriously. Hancock leant against the wall of the building behind. The awning kept the rain off their heads, and Charon hoped perhaps they might avoid any awkward conversation. This man was like Sloan: he talked far too much.   
  
They’d beaten the bulk of the storm with moments to spare. Rain fell in fat, heavy drops, and soon the air was thick with a green, irradiated mist. At least the rain would wash the last of the blood from him. He held his hands out from the shelter of the awning, a sort of peace coming over him as the water carried away the last flecks of red. Probably the radiation, as much as anything else. Another advantage: it would invigorate Hancock. Whatever the stimpak hadn’t healed, the radiation would. He looked over at him, leaning against the wall with one large boot crossed over the other. He looked relaxed.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Charon gave him a long, steady look.   
  
“Yes?”  
  
“You saved my girl today.” He was watching him, a pensive look in his strange dark eyes. “I owe ya.”  
  
“The employer must be protected,” Charon said automatically. He grimaced, and looked away, out through the green mist. “You killed the deathclaw. You had the stimpak. I did not save her.”  
  
He heard Hancock chuckle.   
  
“You are so full of crap.”  
  
Charon said nothing. He was not comfortable taking praise or gratitude for something he had no choice in doing. She could have died, and he had been helpless to do anything but slow her bleeding. Helpless, and terrified.   
  
“You remember how you turned?” Hancock had popped a pill into his mouth, probably a mentat, and was chewing it slowly with his eyes closed.  
  
Much of that time was lost to him, but _this_ , this was something Charon knew he could remember, if he allowed himself to try.  
  
He did not. There were signposts here, warning him away. _Danger. Turn back._  
  
“I can. But I don’t.”  
  
“Long time ago?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Did it hurt?” When Charon did not reply, he continued on, as if that in itself had been an answer. “That fella who used to hang out at the Rexford got turned when the bombs dropped, or not long after. Everything was full of heat and light and pain, he said. Like heaven, if heaven was brutal and cruel, which it might be.” A pause. The sound of rain thundering against broken roofs. “I think we younger ghouls have it easier. At least, it was the way I did it. Shove a needle in your vein and cross your fingers, double or nothing, death or immortality. Simple.”  
  
The horror of this sentence seeped into Charon slowly. Something snapped in his head.  
  
He rounded on him. “You _CHOSE this?!_ You — you injected yourself with radiation? On _purpose?_ What is _wrong_ with you?!”  
  
“The drug was going to turn me or it was going to kill me. Frankly at that point I didn’t care which.”  
  
“Why? If you wanted to off yourself, why not just put a gun to your head?”  
  
He bristled. “I had my reasons. The fuck is it to you?”  
  
“You _willingly_ turned yourself into a monster. You’re crazy.”  
  
“I’m not a _monster_ ,” Hancock said, suddenly too taken aback to be angry. “You think I’m a _monster?_ You sound like someone from Diamond City. Ghouls are _not_ monsters. We’re not zombies, or brain-eaters, or _necrotic post-humans_. We’re people. What the hell got in your head and made you forget that?”  
  
“I looked in a _mirror_.”  
  
Hancock didn’t talk to him after that, went to stand out under the flashing green sky with the rain dripping off his hat. Charon stayed beside the shelter, leaning back against the side with a sense of bitter satisfaction. With Ahzrukhal, no one had asked him stupid, invasive questions. No one had expected him to _make friends_ or _get along_. He could only say one thing to anyone foolish enough to speak to him — _Talk to Ahzrukhal_ — and few had tried. The Wanderer had never asked questions, had never babbled to him or introduced him to anyone else or tried to dig into his head. He had never been forced to _play nice._  
  
He had to admit to himself that Sloan had never forced him to play nice, either. She had simply acted as if he would, showing him off to her friends as if she expected them to like him automatically, showing _them_ off to _him_ as if he should care. And the thing was, he didn’t dislike most of her friends. Valentine in particular had been gratifyingly stand-offish; professional, with old-world mannerisms and an ingrained sense that people found him frightening to look at. They understood that about one another instinctively.   
  
But _Hancock_. Self-congratulatory little shit. They practically worshipped him in Goodneighbor, and he carried that with him. Even with their enemies he sometimes acted as if they were actually friends underneath it all, and the bullets were just a game, a misunderstanding. As if he could talk himself out of a gun to the head if he just smiled in the right sort of way. He probably _could_ , too, and that made it worse. And somehow, despite his stupid smirk and his attempts to beguile the entire world into loving him, a fair number of people seemed to be afraid of him. Why? He was a good fighter, tough, but so were a lot of people in the wasteland.   
  
_Devil-may-care_ , Sloan had called him. She liked that. She liked _him_ , and he seemed to have _no idea_ how rare that was. Like it was due to him, like he _deserved_ her. Did he not understand? Had he been in Goodneighbor so long that he’d forgotten what it was like for the rest of them out here, how much they were hated? There were places in the wasteland that would have strung him up for putting his hands on a girl like her. He told fucking _jokes_ about ghouls eating humans. Ghouls were _murdered_ over shit like that.   
  
It must be the chems, Charon decided. They had damaged his brain. Either that or he was on his way to turning feral.  
  
He shouldn’t show his irritation in front of Sloan. One of the few instructions she had given him was to speak freely, but he didn’t think she’d enjoy it much if he told her what he thought of her boyfriend.  
  
When the storm had finally passed and they opened the Preservation Shelter, Sloan’s face was red and her eyes were bloodshot. The floor of the shelter was littered with empty bottles of rad-X.  
  
She had not been sleeping.  
  
Charon sank down into a crouch in front of her.  
  
“Mistress, what…?”  
  
“The Pulowski Preservation Shelter is not as good a protection against radiation as advertised.” She pushed herself to her feet, trembling a little, and he held out his arms so she could brace herself on him to keep from collapsing.  
  
Hancock put his hand on the door of the shelter and leant towards her. “You OK, love? You had enough rad-X to keep you clean?”  
  
She nodded, reaching out to clasp Hancock’s hand. “Enough. The shelter kept out some of the worst of it. But I’m all out of rad-X now.”  
  
Hancock put a finger to her chin, turning her head to examine her face.  
  
“You been crying?”  
  
She took her hands back and wiped viciously at her face. “You guys were yelling. I don’t like it when my boys fight.”  
  
 “You heard all that, Sunshine?” Hancock put an arm around her waist, and gave her a squeeze. “Not to worry. All friends again. Come on, the Slog’s not too far away. I know you like it there.”  
  
She nodded, but said nothing.   
  
“She can’t travel like this,” Charon growled, watching as she clambered out of the preservation shelter on unstable legs.  
  
“I can. Gimme a buffout, some water. I’m just a little strung out.” She thumped a hand against the blue wall of the fallout shelter. “It kept out the worst of the lightning, so it didn’t sting much, and I took enough rad-X that I think I’m OK. It just makes me jittery when I have too much at once, and I’m still tired from the deathclaw.” She sniffed, and rubbed at her nose. “I kept thinking about all those poor fuckers, those skeletons you find in these things. When they saw the bombs hit in the distance and climbed inside… and instead of protecting them, it cooked them slow.” She turned back and looked at it, contemplative. “I found a feral in one of them once. I thought it had just climbed in there and got trapped, but it could have been in there for two hundred years.”  
  
Hancock bent to look through her pack, and tossed her a bottle of buffout pills. Taking it twice in a few hours was always a bit of a risk, but the sooner they found a trader and got her re-stocked with anti-radiation chems, the happier Charon would be.  
  
“I hope the Slog _has_ some rad-X,” she said as they set off.  
  
“Sure they will, Sunshine. They know you like to stop by.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the problems that crops up when writing video game fic is that there's nearly always an easy method of healing. Spells, medigel, potions, stimpaks. It really takes the urgency out of an injury. Especially Fallout4 stimpaks, which heal limps and head injuries as well as restoring HP. I've elected to go for sort of a mix of Fallout 3 and 4... stims will heal limbs, but improperly set bones will end up malformed and need to be re-broken. They'll help a head injury but you'll still feel kind of out of it until you've had a good night's sleep, that sort of thing. Anyway, I decided to put Sloan's injury at the beginning of the chapter rather than going for a cliffhanger because let's be real, we all know she's not going to die.
> 
> .....YET
> 
> naw I'm just playing with ya
> 
> The argument between Hancock and Charon is one of my favourite parts of the whole story. 
> 
> As far as I know, in canon the drug was just going to turn Hancock, no risk of death, so I took some artistic license there. It just makes sense to me, given that a large dose of rads will either ghoulify you or kill you. Also I imagine no one post-apocalypse has ever heard of Spinal Tapp, but "eleven" nevertheless survives as a part of social consciousness. I like to think Sloan gets the reference but doesn't mention it because she'd just confuse people.


	27. Campfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are just a little bit awkward, and Charon has something on his mind.

Charon put space between them for a while. It felt wrong to know Sloan had overheard the argument he had had with Hancock while they both thought she slept. Raw, painful, like an exposed nerve. He let them range ahead, and watched their backs.  
  
He did not know this place they were going to, _the Slog_ , though the name was not encouraging. Now they had the tape she had been looking for, he thought she might head back to Diamond City, to hand it to the synth Valentine, and maybe Hancock would go back to Goodneighbor and leave them to it. He wanted to be rid of the man. He disrupted the comfortable partnership Charon had developed with the mistress, he asked uncomfortable questions, he was too careless. But Charon could not bring this up, because Sloan loved him. As bizarre as that seemed.  
  
So he left them to trudge along by themselves, chatting quietly, and trusted Hancock to ensure she wasn’t about to keel over while he kept the wild dogs and the bloodbugs off their backs. The afternoon dragged on, but they didn’t stop until Sloan’s buffout began wore and she started to stumble. They made camp just back from the road, in a small hollow surrounded by brushes. Charon sat around the fire from them both, maintaining a little bit of distance.  
  
Often they kept to themselves when they wanted to be affectionate, and Charon had been grateful for it. Tonight was different. When he thought about it, he couldn’t blame them… she had almost died a few hours before, after all. They sat very close, hands clasped together, her head resting on Hancock’s shoulder. He tried not to look at them.  
  
It was a couple of hours after sunset when Charon thought he heard something, out in the night, and left the other two behind to check. It took a few long minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, though he strained to hear the rustle of grass he thought might have indicated a molerat nest, or perhaps a wild dog.  
  
A movement caught his eye, and he swung his gun around to point it into the shadows.  
  
“Come out,” he snarled. “Or don’t. You’ll be dead either way.”  
  
The bushes rustled, and Dogmeat padded up to him, tail wagging and mouth lolled open in a smile.  
  
Charon relaxed a little. “No meat for the mistress tonight, dog? I suppose you’ll want to share _our_ dinner. I’m afraid you’re a bit late.”  
  
Dogmeat sniffed at him a little by way of greeting, and then trotted off in the direction of their camp.  
  
Charon stayed out in the darkness a while longer, making a wide circuit of the camp in case it had not been Dogmeat he had heard, and there was something else out there. He found nothing, and eventually he made his way back towards the fire.  
  
He slowed as he grew closer, pausing in the shadows as he realised he had happened upon a moment more intimate than he was expecting.  
  
Hancock was lying with his head in Sloan’s lap, his tricorner hat on her head, and she was stroking her fingers along the grooves of the skin of his scalp.  
  
“Sing me the sunshine song, Sunshine,” he was murmuring.  
  
“You should be singing _me_ that song,” she teased him.  
  
“I can never remember the words.”  
  
“Fibber,” she said, but she sang it anyway. Her voice was different from before: soft, now, and sweet, instead of the rich, pure tones Charon had heard in the Third Rail.  
  
_“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you keep me happy when skies are grey… You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”_  
  
It was so saccharine that Charon actually felt a little nauseous. He grimaced, and pushed through the bushes into the circle of light.  
  
“You two are revolting,” he told them.  
  
Sloan chuckled. “You want a song next? What shall I sing you?”  
  
“I do not need any songs,” he said, settling in front of the fire across from where Dogmeat was sprawled. He pulled out his gun, and began taking it apart to clean it.  
  
“You need songs,” she said. “You need songs _the most_.”  
  
“The fuck does that mean?” He caught sight of the bottle settled on the ground beside her, and things began to make a little more sense. “You shouldn’t drink on the road. Your reflexes will be slowed. And _you_ should not be drinking at _all_ , mistress. You've lost too much blood.”  
  
Hancock scoffed, his eyes still closed. “It’s just a little something to take the edge off. She's only had a mouthful.” He waved a hand. “Help yourself.”  
  
“I am keeping watch,” Charon reminded him. He nodded to the man’s shotgun. “Here, smoothskin, pass me his gun. It could do with cleaning.”  
  
She did, careful not to upend Hancock onto the ground, and as she settled back down her fingers resumed their stroking.  
  
“I know what song I shall sing for you,” she said.  
  
Charon just grunted. The song she’d sung for Hancock was intimate, private, something he felt wrong for having overheard. He did not want one of his own. This was something… something _emotional_ , an expression of _affection_ , and he did not know how to deal with that sort of thing yet. Especially as she sat with her lover’s head in her lap.  
  
Her voice was softer, somehow, than before. Quiet and gentle as the dawn.  
  
_“If I had words to make a day for you, I’d sing you a morning, golden and new… I would make this day last for all time, give you a night deep in moonshine.”_  
  
She repeated the verse, putting a different stress on the lyrics. When her voice trailed off, leaving only the crackle of the fire, Charon blinked as if a spell had broken, and his cheek twitched as he resumed cleaning his gun.  
  
“It’s a good song,” he said eventually.  
  
“Are you angry with me?”  
  
He looked up at her in surprise. Hancock’s breathing had slowed; he had fallen asleep, and she moved carefully to stretch out her legs without disturbing him.  
  
“Why would I be?”  
  
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel as if you are.”  
  
He shifted, and shook his head. “You’re imagining things.”  
  
“I swear to god, you ripped my heart out today.”  
  
He stared at her. She didn’t look up. Her eyes were fixed into the middle distance, looking through the fire rather than at it. She looked more pensive than sad.  
  
“What?” he croaked.  
  
“The things you said. Arguing with Hancock.”  
  
“Oh.” He swallowed, and his eyes settled back on the gun in front of him.  
  
He did not enjoy the fact that he had upset her. It grated at him. But it grated, too, because what right did she have, to complain that his words had made her sad? It was _his_ damn mutation. She was human, what would she know about it? He wanted to be angry with her, and it bothered him, deeply, that he wasn’t.  
  
Charon had liked the Wanderer, despite himself. He had been a good kid, and a good employer, as his employers went. But he had never had much of an impression that the Wanderer had liked him back. That was understandable; Charon was not likable. He did not exist to be liked. He existed to be utilised.  
  
But this one… She’d been _dying_ , lying on the asphalt with her blood leaking out around his fingers, and she had thought of him. She had thought about his future, about who would _take care_ of him, as if _anyone_ had _ever_ taken care of Charon. It was new. It was frightening. And then she’d sung a song to him over a fucking campfire, a sweet and gentle song that she picked specifically for him, and that — what the hell _was_ that?  
  
She cared. She _cared_ , and what was worse was that he cared back.  
  
He was in deep, deep trouble. Maybe he could have avoided this, if only he’d been looking out for it from the start, but he had let his guard down and now…  
  
He did not understand this sort of affection, this… this friendship. Since he had met her not even four months ago, he had started doing things he hadn't done before. He had _hugged_ her, he had _touched her hair_. He was comfortable with her. She had managed to get under his skin, or what was left of it, and something in the back of his mind whispered that maybe this could be a chance to get her out again.  
  
The trouble was, he didn’t want to. He _liked_ to touch her hair, and walk beside her. He was treated as an equal, or close enough, and it would be hell to give that up… but if he didn’t, if he didn’t put that space back between them, when she died the change would be too hard. It would be too much, to go from how things were now to the sort of employers he’d had before. She would chastise him for yelling at her boyfriend or spout some bullshit about books and covers, or something, and he would tell her to mind her own fucking business and how would _she_ like it if _her_ flesh started rotting off, and then she would distance herself and they would return to some sort of employer-servant relationship that he was more comfortable with. He wouldn’t have to think about her smiles, or wonder at the meaning of her songs, or see the image of her bleeding out every time he closed his eyes, or ever _ever_ feel that sort of fear again. That fear had not been just the contract. Plenty of employers had died on his watch and he had never before felt _anything_ like that fear. That had been something else, something he told himself he wanted no part of, and the sooner that feeling went away, the better.  
  
The worst part was that he knew he couldn’t do it. He knew, on some level, that one stupid argument wouldn’t be enough to push her away and get back that precious distance. That night at the farm, when she had followed him into the darkness, she had burrowed herself into his flesh like a tick, and there was no way to get her out again that would not hurt like hell. If he tried, if he made himself cruel to her, cold, she might simply sell him, and he couldn’t bear that. Not now.  
  
He was fucked either way.  
  
He sighed.  
  
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.  
  
She shifted, on the other side of the fire. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing more to say.” Then she looked up, and met his eyes. “But John had his reasons, for doing what he did. You’re not the only one in this world who’s suffered.”  
  
It was a gentle rebuke, and somehow it hurt the more for it.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sloan's little songs will be further explained in chapter 29, an otherwise unremarkable chapter sandwiched in between two chapters of Emotion. Hint: they are the sort of thing you might sing to small children.


	28. Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things that need to be said.

  
  
She left Hancock behind at the Slog to chat with the people there, sprawled out on a lounger like their king, while she scouted around the area. There were dangers here: ferals to the south-west, as well as super mutants; raiders to the north; deathclaws and rabid dogs besides. There had been no complaints from the people at the Slog, but she liked to know an area was safe, and Charon welcomed the chance to accompany her without the other ghoul around. It would give her the opportunity to yell at him. He felt keenly that there were still things left unsaid.  
  
He walked behind her a few steps, as he had when they first met. He waited until they were out of sight of the Slog, beyond the hills to the north, and made sure the area was safe enough before he spoke.   
  
“I upset you,” he said.   
  
“You don’t like Hancock.” Almost an accusation.  
  
“I do not _dislike_ him..” Which wasn’t precisely true. “But he takes nothing seriously.”   
  
“You have this idea that because Hancock jokes around a lot that he’s not sincere. That he’s dismissive and thoughtless.” She glanced briefly at him over her shoulder as she walked. “A lot of people think that. They underestimate him, think because he’s smiling that he’s not about to stab them in the throat. When he took that drug, he wasn’t being careless. He knew what was going to happen. He did it because he couldn’t stand looking at himself in the mirror any more.”  
  
Charon snorted. “If he couldn’t stand it _before_ he was a ghoul —”  
  
“ _Charon_. Please. He wasn’t exactly in a great place mentally at the time.” She kicked a stone with the toe of her boot, and it clattered down the hill. “A lot of shit had happened that he blamed himself for. It wasn’t his fault, but he still blamed himself for not doing more to stop it. He _cares_. Hardly anyone on this fucking planet cares. _He_ cares. And he cares the most about the ones no one else will care about.”   
  
She stopped, waiting for him to catch up to her. She seemed entirely too small, looking up at him with her eyebrows pinched together. Too small, for someone so full of fervour and fucking passion.   
  
“Goodneighbor used to be an awful place,” she told him. “People went there because they were slightly less likely to die there than out on their own. They were beaten and hurt and exploited. It was one of the nastiest settlements in the Commonwealth, but Hancock turned it into a haven. _A refuge for the lost,_ he calls it. So don’t —” She caught herself on the cusp of an order, and grimaced as she shook her head. “I’m saying that… that _what_ he is, being a ghoul, being an outcast, is tied into _who_ he is, into what he’s done. So when you _yell_ at him about that, yeah, that upsets me. And frankly I can’t stand the fact that you feel that way about yourself, either.”  
  
She pushed past him, but he reached out and grabbed her arm. She stopped, looked up to meet his eyes, but then she flinched and looked away.  
  
Charon grimaced, and let her go. Perhaps she was not so immune to a ghoul’s face, after all.   
  
“I am hard to look at,” he said to her. “I do not understand why…” He hesitated, and tried again. “You cannot change this fact by pretending ghouls are _normal_. My _skin_ is _rotted_. Pieces of me have _fallen off_. It is all I know, but I do not pretend that it is less than horrific. We are monsters. It is no kindness to pretend we’re normal. And it is not your place to tell us how we should feel about being this way.”  
  
He held his breath, waiting for an angered response, but there was nothing. There was no yelling. She just looked as though she was trying not to cry.   
  
He sighed. This was not going as he had anticipated.   
  
He drew a little closer, and lowered his voice. “I didn’t know you were awake, during the storm,” he told her. “I would not have… I do not know your Hancock well, and I did not intend to upset you. I won’t yell at him again. I am sorry.” Her eyes were welling up, and he couldn’t work out why. He was _apologising._ He _never_ apologised to employers. “Smoothskin. Stop it.”  
  
She turned her face away from him, wiping at her eyes. “Jesus _fuck_.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I was just… You probably have no idea what you used to look like.”   
  
It hit him like a cryo-grenade in the chest, a blow, a cold shock, and he stared at her with his mouth open. _What did I look like? My hair was red, my eyes were blue… what else?_ He must have looked in the mirror countless times over his life as a human… and there was nothing. Nothing.  
  
It was true. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember his own _face_. There was nothing, no part of him, no memory, that was human.   
  
She was seriously crying now, shaking from trying to hold back her sobs, one hand pressed against her chest while the other wiped tears from her face.  
  
Charon hesitated, and reached out to settle his hand on her shoulder. _You are fucking hopeless, Charon. She has made you soft, and it will kill you in the end, one way or another._  
  
“Don’t cry over me, smoothskin. Come on.”  
  
“I c-can’t h-help it. I just — you — I-it’s not f-fair.”  
  
“Nothing is fair.”  
  
“I kn-know, b-but —” Her breath was hitching, and if there were any more words in there Charon couldn’t make them out.   
  
He sighed, and sank to his knees beside her, trailing his hand down her arm to take her hand. He tugged, and she turned toward him, her head bent, her face covered by a veil of hair.   
  
“It doesn’t matter, smoothskin. I don’t matter. Please stop crying.”  
  
It was a couple of gulping breaths before she could control herself enough to take a deep lungful of air. She exhaled and took another, held it, raising her head enough that Charon could see the tears running down her cheeks. As she let her breath out again, she looked down at him, and raised her free hand to run her fingers through the remnants of his hair.  
  
It felt strange, almost uncomfortable — no one had ever touched his hair — but perhaps she found doing so as soothing as he had, that night he’d sat with her head in his lap. He said nothing, let her take from it whatever comfort she could. The anguish had melted from her face, leaving a kind of solemn curiosity. Her hand in his was still, warm through the leather of her glove, and he wondered how much he could tighten his grip before she would pull away.  
  
She _did_ pull her hands away from him, suddenly, and he was about to stand until she put her hand briefly on his shoulder, pressing down just a little, as if asking him to stay. Then she took off her gloves, tucked them into her pockets, and held her hand back out to him. The other slid back into his hair, her fingers grazing his scalp, and he tried to suppress a shudder.   
  
_This_ sensation was almost too much. Skin against skin, too much, too rare. He reached up for her hand anyway, felt her palm against his, callouses rough but the rest, _god_ , so soft.   
  
Her fingers stopped moving through his hair, slid down the side of his face, and this, this _was_ too much. He stilled, and dropped his eyes to the buckle of her belt. He swallowed.  
  
“Does this bother you?” she asked softly. Two fingers traced along his cheekbone, his jaw, and then she placed her palm against his cheek and he exhaled a shaking breath.  
  
“Yes,” he said.   
  
“Be honest with me: do you want me to stop?”  
  
He opened his mouth to say _yes_ , and found he could not. _Honest_ , said the order, and he could find no answer that qualified.   
  
She went to pull her hand from his, and his grip tightened for just a moment before he let it go. She placed it on his other cheek, and then she tilted his face up, and bent forward to press a kiss against his forehead.  
  
Charon closed his eyes, and clenched his fists, and felt too goddamn much like a ghost in an old novel. He didn’t want that for himself.  
  
She began to pull away, and as she did so Charon reached up to grasp her hips and then he was rising and he slid his hand behind her head and pressed his mouth against hers.   
  
It was for a moment, just for a moment, barely long enough to register the feeling of her lips against his own, and then he straightened and stepped back, hands dropping from her hip, her neck.  
  
She was staring up at him, her eyebrows raised in surprise, her mouth open just a little, her eyes wet and her cheeks red and stained with tears but still somehow the most beautiful damn thing in the Commonwealth.   
  
He wanted to kill himself. That was the stupidest thing he had ever done. There was no possible scenario in which this ended well. He swallowed, and couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked away.  
  
“Oh,” she said. “Wow.”  
  
His chest was beginning to constrict. _Stupid stupid stupid._  
  
“I apologise, mistress, I crossed a line.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I crossed a line.”  
  
“It’s all right. You can cross it again, if you like.”  
  
“Please do not sell me, I —” He stopped, and looked at her. “What?”  
  
“Charon.” She smiled. “I am not going to sell your contract. Especially not over something like that.”  
  
“I kissed you,” he said. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed? Perhaps she didn’t realise, somehow, that that was beyond unacceptable, that he shouldn’t have even _thought_ about touching her, kissing her, _wanting_ her…  
  
“Yeah,” she said. “That was… unexpected.” She gave him a sheepish sort of smile. “I didn’t think you…I thought…”  
  
“What?” He barked a laugh. “You thought I didn’t _want_ you? Of course I fucking  _want_ you. When I saw you in that red dress it was all I could do not to…” He trailed off, letting his eyes roam down over her, making no effort to hide his greed. “I didn’t think of you that way, before. You were just my employer. Then you try on dresses for me and I realise you’re a _woman_. You think I got my balls cut off when they wrote that contract? You think I don’t want…”  
  
His voice had turned bitter, and she reached out for his hand again.   
  
“Of _course_ I didn’t think that. You just didn’t seem to really be interested.”   
  
“You are in a relationship. You are human. You are my _employer_. I am not…You would never… ”  
  
“I _would._ ” She huffed a quiet laugh to herself. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. Repeatedly.” She shook her head at herself with a wry smile. “I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that you being a ghoul doesn’t particularly bother me. But I couldn’t _say_ anything, I mean, I have authority over you. I couldn’t put you in the position of telling me ‘no’. It wouldn’t be fair.” She was running her fingers over his knuckles, her head bent to examine the tendons bared on the back of his hand. Then shook her head, and let him go. “You were right to keep quiet. This would be a very bad idea.”  
  
He felt as if he were suspended, teetering on the edge of something, waiting for gravity to wake up and pull him down into the abyss. Oh, he knew it was a bad idea. The worst idea. And yet… he wanted to push, to see how far he could go before he fell. There was something intangible in her voice that he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything. There was _possibility._  
  
He took a half-step towards her. “You and MacCready, at the river,” he guessed. “I overheard you talking. About orders, about… right and wrong. You were kind to concern yourself, mistress, but those things need not worry you.” He reached out, his hand hovered at her shoulder, tracing down the length of her arm without touching.  “It would be an order I would enjoy fulfilling. But Hancock…”  
  
“I told you about Hancock. He and I, we have an understanding. Open and honest. Freedom and trust. That’s what we are, that’s what we have. Unless…” She cocked her head to one side. “Maybe _you_ have a problem with that.”  
  
He almost laughed. “You think I have so many opportunities for this that that sort of thing would bother me?”   
  
He felt untethered, suspended, as if the space between his fingers and her arm, the space he didn’t dare breach, meant he could say anything. And touching her would bring them both hurtling back down to earth.  
  
“It bothers a lot of men. A lot of women, too,” she said. “Nothing wrong with wanting to be a one-and-only.”  
  
“I have never been _anything_. Not that I remember. I have no right to ask to be somebody’s one-and-only. Let alone you.” He traced the air above her cheekbone. “You are my mistress. You speak, and I obey.” She said nothing, so he continued his almost-touching, dropping his hand and lifting the other to dance his fingers down the curve of her right arm. “I followed you out here thinking you would yell, perhaps push me away. I think I wanted you to push me away.” His hand brushed against her hip, half by accident. The world did not crumble.  
  
“Why?” she asked him.  
  
“Because I am not used to this. I told you I have never belonged before. I don’t know what is done, or what is expected. I like this, mistress, I like this too much, because I will outlive you, and it will be a hard fucking thing to remember you in a hundred years. It will be hard, knowing what friendship is, knowing what I have lost, when some future employer is letting his men use me for target practice.”  
  
She took a shaking breath, and he was worried for a moment that she might cry again. But when she looked up at him, he saw there was a seriousness in her expression. She was studying him, her forehead furrowed, her eyes flicking back and forth across his face.   
  
“You don’t know what you want,” she said at last.  
  
“No.” He grimaced. “I do not.”  
  
“Well, when you find out, you can tell me.” She pulled her gloves from her pocket and eased them back over her hands, before wiping her face a final time. Whatever spell that had hung over them was broken. “Come on. Let’s get going. There’s a lot of ground to cover.”  
  
  


 

 


	29. Baubles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Slog, part two

  
  
Hancock was still sprawled out on the lounger when they returned, his coat hanging from the back of the chair. He peeked at them from under his hat, and smirked.  
  
“All right?”  
  
“All right.” Sloan caught his hand and squeezed it before walking past into the building.  
  
Charon paused, looking down at the other ghoul.  
  
“You stayed here on purpose,” he accused him.  
  
Hancock shrugged a lazy shoulder. “Figured you and our mutual friend needed some time to talk things out. You both looked like you had shit on your minds. She’s better at that sort of thing than I am. My response is usually to medicate it.” He grinned at him. “Not that I care, or anything, but you _did_ keep most of the blood in her body the other day, so I guess I owe ya. If you ever need to get stoned, you know where to find me.”  
  
Charon exhaled. He doubted, despite Sloan’s assurances, that he would have made that offer if he knew precisely what they had discussed.  
  
“You understand the contract requires me to protect her,” he said  
  
He waved a hand. “I’m not clear on the specifics.”  
  
“I have very little control over myself in that situation. Resisting the contract is… painful. And unpleasant.”  
  
“You saying you would have let her bleed out?” He narrowed his eyes, but there was something in his face that suggested he did not believe it for a moment.  
  
“Other employers, yes,” Charon told him. “If I had had the choice, I would have let them die. If I had had the choice, I would have killed many myself.”  
  
“Did I ask you about other employers?” He was smirking again, and there was a hint there of whatever it was that kept trouble out of the Third Rail. Charon realised, suddenly, that in his way Hancock was a great deal more dangerous than Ahzrukhal had been.  
  
He hesitated. “No. But without the contract I would have had more capacity to act, to think. I might have done better.”  
  
“You did fine. She’s alive, and so are we. Sounds like a win to me.”  
  
“You know what I’d _really_ like?” Sloan sauntered back out onto the patio, free of her jacket and gloves. “I’d like a pool that wasn’t filled with radiation. It feels like _centuries_ since I’ve had a swim.”  
  
“I’m telling you, Sunshine, we find a way to turn you ghoul and we save ourselves a whole lot of problems.” Hancock caught Charon’s eye, as if anticipating his reaction. “And before you start,” he said, “ I’m in this for the long haul. If we somehow manage to make it another fifty years, eventually she’s going to up and die on me.”  
  
Charon’s mouth stretched into a humourless grin. “Look on the bright side,” he growled, “you might turn feral first.”  
  
“Are you two seriously going to snipe at each other the _whole time?_ ” Sloan chuckled, draping herself over the back of Hancock’s deck chair. “You set off each other’s angst buttons. I love you guys, but if you keep this up you’re going to exhaust me and I’ll dump you _both_ back in Goodneighbor and hang out with Dogmeat instead. Dogmeat doesn’t have angst. Dogmeat chases stuff and bites people I don’t like.”  
  
“Hmph.” Hancock affected a scowl. “Like _you_ don’t have angst, Miss My-Whole-World-is-Dead.”  
  
“Exactly. Takes one to know one, babe.” She leaned down to press a kiss against his cheek, then looked out over the pool, and sighed. “I want a swim so goddamn bad. _Look_ at that pool. That much fresh water now… I mean can you imagine? It would be such an unbelievable luxury. I think sometimes we were blind, before the war. All the stuff we took for granted, all the things we did to the earth and to each other, just to get the newest shiny bauble.”  
  
“You think now is so different?” Charon folded his arms, and leant back against the wall. “There is a man here who is building a toy horse. He wants someone to get him more parts for his toy horse. And, mistress,” he raised a hand, “before you _offer_ to do this stupid thing, it will likely involve killing people. There will be raiders, or some other assholes with guns, and you will have to kill them to get the parts for his fucking horse. Those lives are worth a toy to him. _You_ may end up dead. For a toy.” He shrugged. “People now are just as willing to destroy for shiny baubles as they were before the war. More willing. They are just too afraid to do it themselves.”  
  
“You make a compelling point,” she said with a pout. “I’m still going to go talk to him, though.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Do _you_ mind shooting people for baubles?” She fixed him with a searching look. “I mean, I’m okay with it if they’re shitty people and the bauble _means_ something to someone.” She let her hand sweep through the air, indicating the ghouls at work in the field and building defences. “People lead hard lives. Some of them need a little something small to make those lives a bit brighter. But I don’t want to drag you along with me if you have a moral objection to it.”  
  
Charon stared at her, and then let out a bark of laughter.  
  
“ _Moral objection?_ Smoothskin, I don’t care about killing raiders. I _enjoy_ killing raiders. What I hate is these people asking you to walk into danger for their petty desires.”  
  
“You realise I can always say no?” She looked amused.  
  
“You can, but you don’t.”  
  
“A cap’s a cap,” she shrugged. “Although I must admit I wonder why I bother, sometimes. I hardly ever seem to buy anything. I have so many chems at this point I had to leave most of them in my safe. They were weighing me down.”  
  
“Why didn’t you give them to me?” Hancock asked with a huff.  
  
“I give you plenty! What, are you running out or something? You want me to bring you some jet along with all the alcohol I owe you?” She grinned at him. “Actually, that gives me an idea. Maybe I should get you both drunk on booze and rad water until you decide to be friends.”  
  
“Hey, I’m game.”  
  
She looked up at Charon, a question on her face, and he stared at her.  
  
“You cannot be serious.”  
  
“Come oooonnnn, it’s been forever since I got proper drunk.” She bumped her shoulder against his arm. “Besides, I love getting ghouls hopped up on rad water. You go all touchy-feely.”  
  
“It makes our nerves sing,” Hancock told her with a chuckle, running his fingers up the outside of her thigh. “Like jet, but slow.”  
  
“Put another check in the ‘turn Sloan into a ghoul’ column, then,” she said, catching his hand in hers. “Just promise to shoot me if I go feral.”  
  
This seemed to touch on something sensitive for Hancock, as he took her hand in both of his and kissed the tips of her fingers. Charon left them alone, and went inside to sit on one of the spare beds and clean some of the guns.  
  
She found him an hour later, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she watched him reassemble her sniper rifle.  
  
“Free-will check,” she said to him. “I just want to hang out and get drunk and look at the stars. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”  
  
“I know that, smoothskin. I don’t expect that kind of order from you.”  
  
“I know it wasn’t an order. That’s not the same thing.” She plopped down on the bed beside him. “Like… I don’t always know whether or not you’ll say if something’s bothering you. Maybe something’s not an order but you still feel as if it’s expected, so you’ll do it.”  
  
“Are we about to have another conversation in which you are sad about the contract and I tell you nothing can be done about it?”  
  
She sighed, and flopped backwards onto the bed. “I take it you’re sick of that conversation.”  
  
“What gave you the clue?”  
  
She covered her face with her hands and giggled. “Oh, fine. ‘Things Charon does not want to do’ includes indulging my contract guilt.”  
  
“Nothing can be done.”  
  
“I knoowww. If it wasn’t for that fucking thing I’d have shoved you playfully by now, you know?  
  
“Playful is not violence.”  
  
“I’m not taking any chances. How do I know? Maybe you’re just trying to trick me so’s you can be rid of me.”  
  
“And walk back through Diamond City for my contract, and hand it to some asshole who hates ghouls?” He looked down at her to find her grinning. “Ah. The mistress is teasing.”  
  
She did shove him, then, something he would have had trouble interpreting as violence even if it hadn’t been playful.  
  
“You are not very strong. Good thing I am here to lift heavy things.”  
  
“I _am_ strong. You’re just 300 fucking pounds or something.” She jumped off the bed. “I’m going to go check out that town over west a ways and scavenge all the alcohol. These people work hard and built a sweet settlement and I want to get them all drunk. You can stay here, if you want.”  
  
“I will come.” He clicked the gun back together, and set it aside. He smirked at her. “You are going to sing them more of your pathetic, saccharine little children’s songs?”  
  
She went quiet then, and still, and sat back down beside him, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed.  
  
“I’m going to tell you about the songs,” she said, “and maybe afterwards you won’t feel like teasing me about them.”  
  
He looked down at her, his brow furrowing, but she didn’t look up. She kept her eyes on the wooden floorboards.  
  
“My brother was in the army,” she said. “Like me. He was part of the reason I joined; I looked up to him. He was trouble but he was my hero, you know? He was six years older than me and I thought he was the coolest person in the world.” She paused, and swallowed. “He was killed in the Sino-American war. My mother… she didn’t take it well. They came to her door with a folded flag and told her her son was dead, and she didn’t…” She trailed off, and then took a deep breath. “She had a stroke, the morning they brought his coffin home. We buried them two days apart. When we were little, my brother and I, she used to sing us those songs. Lullabies, to send us back to sleep when we had nightmares, when the darkness was full of monsters. She died eight years before Shaun was born; she never got to meet him. I sang her songs to him. Back when he was still mine.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Charon croaked, his throat dry.  
  
“Now my son is dead. But there are still people in my life who have nightmares behind their eyes. And I can’t do much about that. I can’t make the nightmares go away, I can’t make anything better for them. I can’t chase away the monsters. But I can sing them lullabies at night by the fire.”  
  
Charon looked down at his hands, and curled them into fists.  
  
“I will not make fun of your songs any more,” he said.  
  
“Thank you.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it gently. "Now... Let’s go find some booze.”  
  


 

 


	30. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~ * Bonding * ~

  
He sat up on the lookout, his long legs dangling off the edge. The light and noise of the settlement below had become overwhelming, despite the irradiated water, and the alcohol had provoked a pensive melancholy. He had gone in search of a little distance. Before the war, visitors would have come up here to look out over the river, to eat or read or whatever it was tourists did. It was quiet, suspended two stories above the earth. The noises from below seemed distant, carried away by the breeze before they could reach him. If he concentrated, he could hear Sloan telling some sort of story, interrupted here and there by laughter or sounds of appreciation. It served to make the lookout seem more lonesome, somehow. He had brought up a lantern, and its amber glow made his perch an island of peace in the night.  
  
Soft footsteps broke through his reverie.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
He looked up to see Hancock, a bottle of rum dangling from one hand, a cigarette from the other. He took a seat beside him, feet hanging off the edge of the lookout. There was a distant, sorrowful look in his dark eyes that Charon had not expected. He took a swig from his bottle, and passed it to him.  
  
“Seriously, thanks for keeping my girl alive.”  
  
Charon swallowed a mouthful of rum and screwed the top back on the bottle with a grimace.  
  
“The contract —”  
  
“Shut up about the fucking contract.”  
  
Charon glowered at him. “I will _not_ shut up about the _fucking contract_.” He put the bottle back down on the ground between them, and leant back on his hands with a sigh. “You do not understand.”  
  
“Hey, I read the thing. I just don’t think you should let it control you.”  
  
Charon let out a bark of laughter. “You think somehow I have a choice? That I could have _willed_ my way out of this?”  
  
“No, course not. But it’s in your head. Even when there aren’t any orders you’re always talking about it. I mean, Sloan’s a good employer, right? She ain’t the sort of person who would force you to do something you didn’t want.” He shrugged.  
  
“She _is_ a good employer,” Charon said, his hackles settling. He looked out towards the horizon. There was no moon tonight, and there was nothing but darkness and the rush of the river between its banks. “That does not change things. Now the contract controls her, as well as me. She must watch how she speaks. She dislikes the power she has over me.”  
  
“It bothers me. That you don’t resist it, I mean. I’d be fighting it.”  
  
“That is easy to say.” He huffed a sigh. “Perhaps I did, once. I do not remember. There is only so long a person can fight against something.” He paused, letting the hushed sounds of the river soothe him. “ _She_ fights it. She wants to find a way to break it, somehow. I have told her there is no way to do this, but she tries anyway.”  
  
“Yeah. She’s a trier.”  
  
Hancock was quiet, and Charon looked over at him, watched the way his eyes narrowed as he mulled something over. Then he glanced back at him, held his gaze for a moment.  
  
“You’ve been a ghoul a long time, right?”  
  
“Yes. As long as I can remember. More than a hundred years.”  
  
“You ever feel like you were going feral?”  
  
“Sometimes. During a fight, or… Sometimes.”  
  
“I worry about it. Like I’ll take a hit of jet and sometimes there’s a moment where I’m not sure if I’m high or I’m starting to turn feral. Or when — you know, you’re fucking someone and you reach that point where you’re right on the edge and everything’s just white-hot fucking ecstasy and you lose control and for a moment you’re afraid you’re never coming back from this, that you’re lost and they’re gonna have to deal with a feral on top of them.” He shook his head, and chuckled. “I mean, I can’t imagine a worse thing to happen when you’re halfway to an orgasm. Looking up and seeing your partner’s turned feral.”  
  
“It’s not something I have often had the freedom to consider. Few employers have seen fit to give me that sort of time off.”  
  
Hancock stared at him, cigarette hanging from his mouth.  
  
“What, you mean…”  
  
“It has been a while.”  
  
“Well _that_ ain’t right.” He took his cigarette from between his lips and blew an irritated stream of smoke over the river. “We gotta do something about that. I’ll talk to Sunshine, she —”  
  
“ _What? No._ ” He gaped at him. “You cannot be serious.”  
  
“What? She likes you, I like to watch.” He grinned. “What’s the problem? You not into her or something? ‘Cause I might take personal offence.”  
  
Charon growled at the back of his throat. “She is…” He struggled for the right word, and gave up with a sigh. “She is something else.”  
  
“You got that right.”  
  
“If there came a day when she lost her senses and invited me to her bed, I promise you, _you_ would _not_ get to watch.” He grimaced, and shook his head. “No. I do not like to indulge in fantasies over what I can’t have.”  
  
“Who says you can’t?” He chuckled. “This is the ghoul thing, right? It bothers you.” A small smirk curled his lips, and he played with his cigarette between his fingers. “You think I don’t wonder what she sees in me? Why she’s happy to wake up to _this_ mug every morning?” His face contorted into a grimace, and he stared off, unseeing, towards the horizon. “Listen, I fucked up pretty much every good thing I ever had. She is living proof that karma ain’t real, because if it was there is no way she’d be running with the likes of me.”  
  
Charon had not expected that from him. There was nothing in the way he acted, the devil-may-care smile, that made him seem like the sort of person who felt that way about himself.  
  
“She admires you,” he said. “What you’ve done.”  
  
“Whatever she sees in me — I don’t know what it is. Whatever she sees, I don’t see it. I am _not_ a good person.” Hancock leant forward, elbows on his knees. “I turned myself into a _ghoul_ because I couldn’t stand the bastard I saw in the mirror any more.” His fingers twitched, ash falling from his cigarette over the edge of the lookout. “That coward who let all those ghouls from Diamond City die… if I took that drug, I’d never have to look at him again. I’d be a ghoul, or I’d be dead. Either way I’d be free.” He sighed. “She’s the best thing to ever happen to me. She’s beautiful and tough and she is _smart_ as hell, and I ain’t gonna let jealousy ruin what we got. That ain’t me.” He took a deep drag from his cigarette, and watched the smoke float from his mouth up towards the stars. “I love how much she cares about people. Everyone. The man who took her kid? She killed him, and he deserved it. Then she went and watched all his memories at the Memory Den and it turned out he had a wife and kid, or something, and an abusive father, and she fucking _cried_ about it. This guy took her kid from her and she _hated_ him. That jacket she wears? She took that off his corpse. She hated him and she still cried over him. She is vengeance and mercy. You know how much I love her?” He turned and fixed Charon with a look that was almost haunted.  
  
Charon couldn’t hold his gaze. “But you… don’t mind? If she’s with other people?”  
  
“She’s free. I ain’t gonna be the man who clips her wings. I got her, everything else is just details and drug paraphernalia.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Besides, she don’t mind when _I_ fuck other people. I ain’t a hypocrite.” He crushed out his cigarette, and pulled out a packet to retrieve another. “The war took her whole family from her, and she’s building a new one. If she wants to build it out of the Commonwealth’s biggest freaks and fuck-ups, that’s fine by me. I’m just happy to be part of it.”  
  
Charon took the cigarette he offered, and held it out as he lit it for him. He took a long drag, and rolled it contemplatively between his fingers.  
  
“Why does she like ghouls?” he asked him.  
  
“Dunno. Don’t wanna ask in case she realises she’s been wrong the whole time.” Hancock huffed out a lungful of smoke, and stared contemplatively at the stars. “I think it’s the outcast thing. She finds it hard to get along with a lot of humans… she just don’t belong. Nor do we, so she feels like we understand her. Same thing with Nick, or MacCready. Even Strong. They don’t fit. They don’t belong. Plenty of humans — _smoothskins_ as you call ‘em — don’t fit right in the world. Some of them become like Pickman, twisted bastards. Others end up in Goodneighbor.” He smirked at himself. “Or they’re me, and find a way to turn themselves into a ghoul, just so their outside matches their inside.” He held up the bottle of rum in mock salute, and tipped it back.  
  
“You’re a tragic little fucker, aren’t you?”  
  
Hancock spluttered, choking on his rum as he laughed. “Yeah, well, you can talk, you big broody asshole. Least I don’t agonise over my own face all day. How many times you have to be told that you’re the only one that cares? No one who matters gives a damn.”  
  
Charon sighed, and leant back on his hands, looking up at the stars. “I wonder,” he said, his voice low, “whether it truly doesn’t bother her, or whether she is good at hiding it.”  
  
“I wondered that, for a while. Don’t any more. She wouldn’t look at me like she does, if it did. Only ever bothered her that one time she was having a nightmare and woke up and thought I was a feral.” He laughed. “She smacked me right in the face, bless her heart. If I had a nose she would have broken it.”  
  
“She _likes_ ghouls. It confuses me. That other one, Deegan, the way she watches him. She have a _fetish_ or something?”  
  
“It’s all about the texture.”  
  
Charon whipped his head around to see her standing a few steps away, her hand on her hip, a lop-sided grin on her face.  
  
He stared at her in horror. “Mistress —”  
  
Hancock was laughing, pushing himself to his feet to stand behind her, his hands on her hips, bending to kiss his way along her shoulder. She responded by sinking back against him, her face relaxed, her hand creeping up around the back of Hancock’s neck. Charon looked away, but not before he caught her grin.  
  
She chuckled. “It’s fine, Charon, really, it is. Honestly? I’m not keen on fucking anyone who can get me pregnant. That was tough enough _before_ the war, I can’t imagine going through it now. Ghouls are sterile. So is Nick, as far as I know, but he never seemed interested. Not for lack of trying on my part.”  
  
He looked back at her in time to see Hancock’s teeth nip at her earlobe. Her lips parted, and Charon began to think he should be somewhere else.  
  
He scrambled to his feet, but before he could make as if to leave, Hancock pressed a kiss against her cheek and with a pat on the ass he let her go, chuckling as he made his way down the stairs.  
  
Charon cleared his throat, glad his ruined skin wouldn’t show the flush of blood in his cheeks.  
  
“Texture,” she said again. “Fingers — and other things. I like the way ghouls feel beneath my hands… and the way I feel beneath theirs. You’re _warm._ And you’re all different.” She cocked her head to one side. “Is that a bad thing?”  
  
“We look —” He broke off.  
  
“Charon, honestly. Once you get used to it, it’s not a big deal.” She spread her hands. “Hancock is a _darling_ , light-of-my-life, fire-of-my-loins, my sin and my soul. I’d love him no matter what he looked like. The ghoul thing is irrelevant. Deegan? Well, I like the guy.” She looked up at the stars. “I like how much he loves the Cabots. They’re his _family._ The way he looks at them, it’s just the sweetest thing. I like the way he carries himself, the sense of purpose he has. I’ve flirted a little but never really made overtures. I don’t know him well enough.”  
  
“That matters to you?” He spoke out of surprise, and hadn’t meant to; he turned his face away to look out over the river.  
  
“I mean, yes and no. Not always, but… I don’t know. I feel like sex is better when there’s trust. Nothing wrong with a stranger or a one-night-stand, that’s good too, it’s just different. And I might be wrong, but Deegan doesn’t really strike me as a one-night-stand kind of guy. He needs some substance there, even if I don’t.”  
  
She lowered herself to the ground, letting her feet dangle out over the edge of the lookout, and Charon sat back down beside her.  
  
“Hancock’s extra-curricular activities are always just people who catch his eye,” she told him. “A new guy in town, a girl at the bar. I kind of like that about him, that sort of spontaneous passion. He doesn’t have _regulars_ all that often, because that requires a level of trust he doesn’t easily give. There are so few people he really gets close to. Except Fahrenheit, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t swing that way.” She kicked her feet. “When we started out, we talked about it, keeping things open. I didn’t want to chain him down. Freedom means so much to him. And he’s a guy who likes to share everything he has. He’s generous like that. If there’s something good in his life, he wants to spread it as far as possible.”  
  
Charon curled his lip, and she laughed.  
  
“I didn’t mean it _that_ way. He wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. But he pushes my boundaries, and I like that. It needs trust, and I trust him. Keeping things open was a part of that; you have to trust the other person to be honest, to tell you what they’re doing and with whom. I was so lucky with Nate, that he got that. He was traditional in a lot of ways, but he fell in love all the time. I always loved that about him, the way he loved other people, you know?” She met Charon’s eye for a moment, and then looked back down at her feet dangling below. “He and Sam were so close. Plus when they were deployed… it was good, to know there was someone there for him. Someone to hold.” She frowned. “I don’t know if Hancock has that. He has Fahrenheit, I know he trusts her with his life, but... I don’t know. Everyone loves Hancock, or nearly everyone, and he tries to stay one of the people, but I think sometimes he feels isolated.” She shook her head. Then she shrugged. “You never know, maybe some night Deegan will turn up in the Third Rail and we’ll have some fun and leave it at that, but I’m not sure I see it going any further. I don’t have designs on him or anything, I just like his vibe, that’s all.” She looked over at Charon, and smiled. “I like the way ghouls feel, I like that you’re warm, and it’s pretty comforting to know I’m not gonna get knocked up. But I don’t go around hitting on people just because they’re ghouls. For whatever that’s worth.”  
  
Charon hesitated, and looked out at the darkness.  
  
“Why are you telling me this?”  
  
“You asked.”  
  
He grumbled, toying with his cigarette. “I apologise. It was not my place.”  
  
“It’s okay. I think at this point, you’re entitled to ask.” She picked up Hancock’s bottle of rum, and unscrewed the lid to take a mouthful. She swallowed with a huff of satisfaction. “You and me, well, there’s a lot more shit there to wade through there. Orders and contracts and power plays.”  
  
“I…” His throat dried up, and he took a breath, reaching for the bottle. He tipped a mouthful of rum down his throat, and grimaced as he swallowed. He tried again. “I have difficulty accepting the idea that you might… think of me that way.” His cheeks were growing hot.  
  
“Okay,” she said.  
  
“…Okay?”  
  
“I know you hate being a ghoul, hate the way you look. But I don’t.” She shrugged. “Look, I think you’re… I mean, you’re _big_. Big and tough and lean. You have broad shoulders, narrow waist, strong arms. You hit all the basic make-a-girl’s-panties-wet factors. The only difference is that you’re a ghoul. You might be surprised, is what I’m saying. You have more options than you think.”  
  
Charon ducked his head to hide his smile. If it was a lie, it was a kind one.  
  
“I have had two centuries of people being terrified to look at me,” he said to her. “You will have to forgive me if I find that a bit hard to accept.”  
  
She chuckled, and swung her feet. “Fair enough. You know, if it _really_ bothers you, you could go full Erik-the-Opera-Ghost. Wear a mask, start haunting an opera house, trick sweet ingénues into thinking you’re an angel…” She smirked at him.  
  
He choked back a laugh. “You making fun of me, smoothskin?”  
  
Her smile grew. “I am. I’d still buy you a mask, though, if you wanted one.”  
  
 “Hmph. No. Being scary-looking has its uses.”  
  
“That it does.”  
  
He shot a look at her, studying the long scar across her face. It was, in a way, the thing that marked the change from the woman from before the war to the wastelander she had almost become. A birthmark, of sorts.  
  
“You don’t…” He hesitated. “Never mind.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I was just… The scar.” He lifted a hand to hover an inch from her face, tracing the line from her hair, across her eye, curving around her cheek to end just above her jaw. “It never bothered you?”  
  
“Are you kidding? I look like a fucking badass.”  
  
His face relaxed into a grin. “Yes. It, uh… I think it suits you.”  
  
It was hard to see, in the lamplight, but he thought perhaps a hint of colour spread across her cheeks as she smiled.  
  
“I’m glad you think so,” she said, and looked down at her feet. “It did bother me, to begin with, in a way. Not because of what it was. Sort of because of what it meant. No turning back. This is the world now.” She huffed a sigh. “Mostly I was just glad to not be dead.”  
  
They sat for a few moments, quiet, the night air filled with the hum of insects and the distant laughter from the building below.  
  
She took another mouthful of rum, her fingernails tapping on the glass of the bottle as she screwed the cap back on.  
  
“You know, I never thanked you. Not properly.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
She gave him a look, as if he should know damn well what.  
  
“For saving my life, idiot. I could have died back there, with that deathclaw. I very nearly did. I’m only here because you kept pressure on my throat.”  
  
He looked out over the hills.  
  
“I could have done better,” he said. “I _should_ have done better. I should have reached you before the deathclaw did. Without the contract, maybe I could have found a stimpak... I could at least have killed it. If Hancock had not been there, you would be dead.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“You were hurt, and the employer must be protected.” He felt, as he said it, as if he could hear the echoes of a hundred thousand repetitions, long ago. “I couldn’t control my actions. I couldn’t move my hands. I could barely think. I could not defend you the way I should have done.” The image of her flashed across his mind, her eyes closing, blood seeping through his fingers, and he turned, instinctively, to press his forehead against her shoulder. He felt her hand settle against the the back of his neck.  
  
“You saved me,” she reminded him. “I am certain that there have been plenty of others over the years whom you failed to save. I killed one of them myself, if you’ll remember. But you saved me.” She was quiet, for a moment. “I fell and it slashed me, and I knew it had killed me. It didn’t hurt. It really didn’t. I just felt cold. But I knew. A few seconds, a minute, and I was dead. There was all this wetness, and there was a darkness around the edges of my vision. And then you were there, and you had your hands pressed to my neck and you were looking down at me, and I felt so damn guilty for dying and fucking everything up for you. I was afraid you’d end up with some bastard who…” She trailed off, and sighed. “And I didn’t want to leave Hancock. We’ve had so little time.”  
  
“You closed your eyes,” Charon said.  
  
“What?”  
  
He lifted his head and glanced at her, unaware he had spoken aloud.  
  
“You closed your eyes.”  
  
“Yes.” She found his hand in the low light, and held it between both of hers. “I was tired. But I knew you were there. Your hands were warm, and I could hear your voice. You told me not to die, and… and I was so tired. I’m sorry, Charon. But it’s okay. I’m here now, and alive, and so are you. I just wanted to thank you.”  
  
“You shouldn’t.” He looked out into the night. “I could barely think, my head was full of noise, my nerves were on fire. You know what it does when the employer is injured? I cannot control myself. The contract kept my hands there. I couldn’t move.”  
  
“You did good, Charon.” She put her hand to his jaw and turned his head to face her. “You did good. Okay?”  
  
He exhaled a shaky breath.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
There was a moment in which something could have happened, in which he could have leant forward, but he didn’t and she took her hand away, and he felt cold instead.  
  
“Was there a time,” she asked, “when you ever thought you were dying?”  
  
“When I had radiation sickness,” he said without thinking. It surprised him, more than it surprised her, and he let the memory of that moment, that ancient fear, sit with him for just a little while.  
  
“You remember that? Wait, no, you said you did. That you _could_ , but you _didn’t._ ”  
  
“You find many ghouls willing to talk about that time with you, smoothskin?”  
  
She shook her head, and her face was bleak.  
  
“No. Not even Hancock. I’ve seen enough body horror flicks to know it must be terrifying.”  
  
“I do not know what that means, body horror.”  
  
She shrugged. “Body horror’s when something happens to a person that they shouldn’t be able to live through. The body is physically twisted, or broken somehow, in a way that feels wrong when you look at it. Rot, corruption, torture beyond what people can survive, and yet they do. Sometimes they’re warped in the head and they don’t even notice it. You know, I saw a feral once whose face had melted onto its shoulder. It saw me and stood up and tried to raise its head, and it couldn’t. It strained and strained until it ripped half its face off. It was standing there with its skull all gristly and its face, all the… all the skin, the flesh, was still stuck to its shoulder. That’s body-horror. Something that reaches into your lizard-brain and says _this is wrong_.”  
  
He nodded, and swallowed, looking down at his boots.  
  
“The hard part is when the cartilage goes.”  
  
She flinched, and he thought she was going to say something, her face trapped halfway between a sob and a manic laugh, and then she picked up the rum bottle and unscrewed the top, and took three gulps before she spluttered and offered it to him.  
  
He took it, and drained the last few mouthfuls from the bottle before tossing it down onto the ground far below. He could do with some more rad-water. It always made him feel warmer, happy. He could do with feeling warmer, right now.  
  
So could she. She was shivering, just a little. The wind blowing in from the ocean was cold.  
  
“You should go back in,” he said. “You’re shivering.”  
  
“Just a little while longer.” She looked up into the stars, and sighed. “They really are still just the same. The same as they always were.” She held up a hand, pointing. “See that one? Orion. One of those stars, that one there, it’s a red supergiant called Betelgeuse. If you put our sun next to it, it would be so small you couldn’t even see it. Not our planet, our _sun_. That star is larger than we can even conceive of.” Her voice grew quiet. “No matter what happens down here, on our tiny rock, the universe goes on, without even noticing. We drop bombs and kill millions, and everything else keeps on turning. None of it matters.”  
  
He followed her gaze, and watched the red star twinkling.  
  
“It is strange to think you might be older than I am,” he said to her after a while.  
  
“I wish I could show you what it was like. Everything here is trapped between life and death. I miss the green. The green was life. Without it everything’s just waiting to die. Like a ghoul, I guess. Not the waiting to die part, the… the trapped part. Like you went halfway to death and then got stuck. The whole world is a ghoul.”  
  
Charon chuckled.  
  
“What?”  
  
“There was a ghoul settlement, in D.C. Still there, I hope. Called Underworld. I was not there when it was formed, but I think it was named for that reason. Everyone there is some level of dead. A town full of corpses.”  
  
“You must have fit right in, then. With a name like Charon, I mean. If I were them I would have made you the doorman. Suitable.”  
  
“My employer, at the time, he did not like to share my services. I was the bouncer at his bar. I would fetch what he was owed from his debtors, among other things.” He stabbed out his cigarette on the floor of the lookout. “I told you about him once. Ahzrukhal.”  
  
“Did you like it there? In Underworld, I mean.”  
  
“No. Perhaps if I had been free, I might have enjoyed it more. As it was, I did nothing all day, except for when I hurt people my employer disliked. He was not a good man to work for.”  
  
“How long were you there?”  
  
He winced. “Decades. More than thirty years.”  
  
“Jesus. You must have been bored out of your mind.”  
  
“Yes. But there are worse things than boredom.”  
  
“That’s true.” She rubbed her arms, and shivered. “Let’s go back inside. I’m cold, and if we stay out here any longer I’m going to get gloomy.”  
  
He might have stayed out a while longer, but she was waiting for him, with an outstretched hand, and so he climbed to his feet, and took it.  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comparative size of our Sun to Betelgeuse: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Comparison_of_planets_and_stars_%282017_update%29.png
> 
> Sloan likes the way Nabokov writes and takes it for granted that no one in the wasteland has actually read Lolita, so she can steal from it all she likes.
> 
> (And girl, you totally have a ghoul fetish, stop lying)


	31. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet time of day. Good for thinking.

  
  
“What do you mean, you don’t sleep?” Wiseman stared at him.  
  
He was sitting on a chair out the front of the main building, his shotgun on his knees, when the man had approached him to explain how sorry he was that they didn’t have enough beds. As if their tiny cots would have fit him anyway.  
  
“I do not sleep,” he repeated. “You need not bother yourself in finding a place for me.”  
  
“Everyone sleeps.”  
  
“I do not sleep.”  
  
Wiseman took off his hat, and ran his hand over his scalp. “That’s not right. Why don’t you sleep?”  
  
Charon’s cheek twitched. He was beginning to get annoyed with the man’s badgering. He meant well, it was clear — looking after people appeared to be part of what drove him — but it was still an irritation. Charon was not someone who required looking-after. But he did not want to cause an argument. Wiseman was a good man, and a pretty brave one. Putting a settlement together took work, and this area was dangerous. He respected him enough to want to avoid causing any trouble.  
  
Besides, the mistress liked it here.  
  
“I do not sleep,” he said, “because this place is not safe. Someone must keep watch, and it may as well be me. I am used to it. I must protect my employer.” He pointed through the doorway at the sleeping woman, curled up on one of the small beds with Hancock in a warm haze of alcohol and whatever else. “Do you want to wake her and ask? She will tell you to leave me alone.”  
  
Wiseman looked almost horrified. “ _She_ makes you stay awake? I always thought she was a decent person.”  
  
“She _is_ a decent person,” Charon growled. “She does not _make_ me do anything, if she can help it. She prefers I sleep. I choose not to. I am used to this. You need not concern yourself.”  
  
Wiseman did not seem convinced.  
  
“Wake her,” Charon repeated.  
  
“I would, but I don’t… I don’t want to wake _him_.” He looked over at them in trepidation. “I know he did good work in Goodneighbor, but he’s…”  
  
“You think he’d be angry?” He didn’t seem the type to be bothered by something like that. Charon had _destroyed his bar_ and it had barely made him frown.  
  
“No. I think he’d stab someone who approached him while he was sleeping. He didn’t stay alive and in charge for this long by not expecting trouble.” Wiseman shifted on his feet, and sighed. “I’ll take your word for it, big man. You’re not from the Commonwealth, are you?”  
  
“DC. The Capital Wasteland.”  
  
“They treat ghouls all right there?”  
  
Charon’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “No. Worse than here.”  
  
“Worse?”  
  
“You don’t call humans ‘smoothskins’. That means they don’t call _you_ ‘brain-eaters’.”  
  
“Some of us used to live in Diamond City,” Wiseman said. There was a hint of nostalgia in his voice, of sadness. “Things were a bit better, then, but we were still second-class citizens. They’ve only been getting worse since. When they kicked us out, Diamond City was happy to watch the ghouls who had lived among them starve or get murdered by raiders. Not everyone came north with me. Most of those that didn’t are dead.” He gestured through the door towards the beds. “Hancock did what he could. Tried to keep them from getting kicked out, and got kicked out himself in the process. He brought them food, but he was really little more than a kid back then. There was only so much he could do by himself.”  
  
“I didn’t know that.” Charon looked through the door at Hancock, curled up on the bed next to his employer. “He got himself kicked out of Diamond City?”  
  
“I don’t know the details precisely. Maybe he just decided he couldn’t stand to live with those people any more.”  
  
“This was _before_ he was a ghoul.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why did he do that?”  
  
“I don’t know. He probably shouldn’t have. It cost him.” Wiseman sighed, and folded his arms. “Some ghouls went with us and some went with him to Goodneighbor, and the rest of them died, and no one in Diamond City cared. Plenty of settlements won’t take us. There’s Goodneighbor, a couple of small settlements in the wasteland, and there’s the Slog. We’re the only one that’s ghouls-only. Not that we’re not welcoming to human visitors,” he added hastily. “Your — uh —”  
  
“Employer.” He grinned. “Or _mistress_ , if you prefer.”  
  
Wiseman’s eyes slid away from him, and he shifted, uncomfortable.  
  
“She’s, uh, always been supportive of the place. She showed up one day with her dog and I told her what we were doing here, she immediately offered to help. Not many humans would do that. Makes sense that she’d travel with him. And with you. Not many people would.”  
  
“She is a decent person,” Charon repeated.  
  
“We try to be decent people too. Look, I’ll take second watch. You can take my bed.”  
  
Charon waved him away. “No. Go and sleep. I will keep watch.”  
  
Wiseman hesitated, but he nodded, and went back inside.  
  
After a while, Charon glanced back over his shoulder, at Sloan wrapped in Hancock’s arms. The juxtaposition of their faces... and yet, it didn’t bother him as much as it used to.  
  
She woke before dawn, extricating herself from Hancock’s arms and drifting across to where Charon was sitting watch.  
  
“G’morning, killer,” she said. She pulled up a chair and sat beside him, her legs curled up beneath her.  
  
He wondered when it was she’d started calling him that. She’d threatened to give him a nickname months ago, but she’d been subtle enough about it that he hadn’t really noticed. Tricky little smoothskin.  
  
“You slept well?”  
  
She shrugged. “Not bad,” she said, her voice hushed. “It’s a nice morning.”  
  
He grunted. It didn’t seem particularly special to him. There was a faint chill in the air, and the sky was beginning to lighten to the east. But she had always loved the dawn.  
  
He glanced over at her. Her face was tilted to the sky, looking up at the stars as they winked out. He couldn’t see her scar from this angle, just her right profile, paler than usual in the dark, her features only just visible in the early morning. He tried to imagine her face without the scar, her skin whole and unmarked, and failed. She wouldn’t be herself without it. It was what made her striking.  
  
He wondered, idly, what her husband would have thought of it. Would he consider it a flaw? Wastelanders didn’t worry so much about scars, not when there were ghouls around to spit at, and after all it was hard to survive without gaining at least a couple. But her soldier, the man from back when the world was whole… She no longer looked like a model from an old billboard. Would she be less of a beauty to him now?  
  
Beauty was a good name for her, he decided, his eyes meandering along the sharp line of her jaw. She was a fairy-tale creature, asleep for two hundred years. No amount of scars would rid her of that old-world glamour.  
  
He had _kissed_ her yesterday. Was he out of his mind? He was out of his mind. Kissing his fucking _employer._ That was a disaster waiting to happen.  
  
He was a damn fool, letting himself get close to her.  
  
He looked away. If he didn’t, if he kept watching her in the half-light all soft and solemn he’d be tempted to kiss her again and that was a worse idea than the first time had been. He had acted on impulse then, desperate to be more than some lost soul pining from afar for his whole fucking life, and had only confused things further. Because what could he do? He was too close to her already. _You don’t know what you want_ , she’d said. The problem was that what he _wanted_ was so damn stupid, so fucking _suicidal_ that he pushed it away. Even if he didn’t, even if he could admit it to himself, he had no idea how this sort of thing went.  
  
He didn’t want to want her. They had been friends, and once he’d gotten used to the idea he’d been _happy_ to have a friend. And yes, he’d admired her. He’d thought he could desire her silently, and maybe he still could have done if he hadn’t fucked everything up. Even now she wouldn’t push anything. She’d let him wait until he’d decided what he wanted from this, from her. He could tell her he wanted a friend and that was all, and she’d allow it. They could go back to the way things had been before.  
  
Except that they couldn’t, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to.  
  
“I think we’ll hang out here for a few days,” she said, breaking the silence. “That all right with you?”  
  
“Yes, mistress.”  
  
“Just… you don’t have to take the watch every night. You don’t have to sleep either, but at least take a break. There are plenty of people here to cover the watches. They’re used to it.”  
  
“So am I,” he reminded her.  
  
She shrugged. “Okay. Whatever you like. I just figured you might like some time off.” She stretched her arms above her head, and her mouth opened in a silent yawn. “I think I’ll go for a walk. You want to come with?”  
  
In no way did he want to be out there alone with her at this moment, but nor could he let her go by herself. Reluctantly, he nodded.  
  
“I will need to wake someone to take the watch,” he said.  
  
“Okay. I’m going to splash some water on my face. Meet you back here.”  
  
Charon slipped inside, and let his eyes wander over the sleepers, until he was struck by the temptation to wake Hancock. He very much wanted to see whether or not Wiseman’s fears were warranted.  
  
He paused, glancing at the settlers again. They had been up late, drinking and talking. Later than usual, he suspected. Settlers usually rose early. Which among them would be the least bothered by the idea of taking watch?  
  
No. Let them sleep. Hancock could take some responsibility, for a change.  
  
He stepped over towards the small cot on which he was sleeping, and prodded him with the butt of his gun.  
  
Even half asleep, some instinct took over. Hancock rolled off the bed and jumped to his feet, knife in his hand, adrenaline twisting his face into a grimace.  
  
Charon was impressed, despite himself. He was familiar enough with that instinct — everyone in the wasteland was, if they’d survived enough — but he was willing to bet Hancock was at least a little hung over. It did seem to take the man a few seconds to recognise him, and he scowled, slipping his knife away as he climbed back onto the bed.  
  
“The fuck do you want?”  
  
 “The mistress wants to take a walk,” Charon told him. “Take the watch, or wake someone else to do it.”  
  
“Why don’t you do it?” Hancock rubbed his face with both hands, and yawned.  
  
“The mistress wants to take a walk,” he repeated patiently.  
  
Hancock squinted up at him. “You ain’t her puppy. Let her take a walk by herself.”  
  
“The employer must be —”  
  
“Protected, yeah, I know.” He waved a hand at him. “Fine, fine. Get outta here. I’ll take the damn watch.”  
  
She was waiting for him outside the door, her jacket zipped up against the chill.  
  
He followed her out into the wasteland. The sun was rising, sending threads of pink and orange across the sky. The birds were waking, singing their trilling songs to celebrate the dawn. The air was crisp, and the mistress paused, and closed her eyes. The morning brought her peace.  
  
It brought him peace, too, in a way. Just walking with her, quiet and content… A part of him had been worried that he’d ruined everything, that there would only ever be tension between them now. She was not tense. It was as if nothing had changed, and they enjoyed the dawn in a familiar, companionable silence.  
  
“Does he know?” Charon asked eventually. “Did you tell him what I — what —”  
  
“I did,” she said, with a solemn calmness that settled him.  
  
“….What did he say?”  
  
“ _Fucking finally_ , if you must know.” She shot him a smirk. “You needn’t look so surprised. He’s been on your team since the day I brought you home. Mostly because he thinks it’d be hot to watch you fuck me stupid, of course, but still.” She shrugged, and looked off towards the eastern horizon.  
  
Charon stared at her, his expression was trapped somewhere between astonishment and horror. He had _no_ idea what to say to that. He didn’t even know what he _thought_ about that. The _fuck her stupid_ part was, well, yes, but the first half of that sentence? Absol _ute_ ly not. Exactly how often was Hancock thinking about that?  
  
He cleared his throat.  
  
“I — he — I wouldn’t —”  
  
Sloan snorted a laugh.  
  
“Don’t worry, Charon. I’ve told him to leave you out of his fantasies and his grand plans.”  
  
“Thank fucking Christ,” he murmured, and she chuckled.  
  
She was still staring out towards the ocean, tilting her head as if she could smell the salt in the air.  
  
“He hasn’t mentioned it,” she said after a moment, “but there’s no way he hasn’t been gathering intel on you.”  
  
Charon’s chest felt suddenly too tight.  
  
“Deegan,” he said, anxiety flaring. “And the other one.” Fuck. Fuck, fuck. He took a deep breath. Whatever they had told Hancock, it hadn’t been enough for him to want him dead. That was something, at least. He could cling to that.  
   
“Yeah. Maybe others, too; I don’t know.” She glanced over at him, and her expression changed. “Charon, he knows what the contract means. He knows that you didn’t have any choice in doing those things.”  
  
He nodded, fighting against his nerves.  
  
“Then what…?”  
  
She shrugged. “It bothers him. The contract, I mean. You don’t know how much. I think he suspected that on some level you might resent me, just for being the one who owns it.”  
  
Hancock had had every right to suspect the worst after what he had learned. Every right to want to protect her from him. To take her away. Instead, he’d gone to the trouble of understanding what the contract meant. He’d sought him out and talked to him. For her sake, yes, but still… someone else in Hancock’s place would have put a gun to Charon’s head.  
  
He was seriously beginning to think that he had judged him unfairly.  
  
“That’s part of the reason I wanted to bring him along with us for a while,” Sloan was saying, a small note of apology in her voice. “You’re the one watching my back. He has to trust you to do that.  I mean, _I_ trust you, and he trusts me, but still. He feels better knowing… you know…” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “That you don’t just keep me safe because you _have_ to.”  
  
“I don’t,” he said stiffly.  
  
“I know. And so does he, now he’s had the chance to get to know you.”  
  
“You could have told me that,” he said softly. He thought, for a moment, that if he had known he would have treated Hancock better — but no, he wouldn’t have. He would have resented it; the idea that he was only here, with her, because he had to be.  
  
“It was only part of why I asked him along. And I didn’t want you to feel like you were being judged. It wasn’t about that.” She waved a hand. “Enough of that. I didn’t bring you out here to talk about Hancock. I just wanted a walk.” She thought for a moment, and then glanced at him. “You want to go look at the sea? It’s not _too_ far away.”  
  
“You have only a pistol. If you want to head to the shore, you need another gun.”  
  
She made a soft little huffing sound, and grinned.  
  
“Who died and put _you_ in charge?”  
  
“…What?”  
  
She laughed then, reaching for his hand to give it a brief squeeze.  
  
“Nothing, Charon. I was just joking around. Let’s just stay here.”  
  
They lingered a little longer, until the pink had gone from the sky.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like everyone talks about Hancock too much but shit needs to be discussed and also Charon needs to grudgingly accept that Hancock has redeeming features so this is where we're at I guess
> 
> plus it's interesting to consider the thing from Hancock's perspective, which we have so little access to at this point. His girlfriend turns up, after a month and a half, with a giant who's essentially a slave and who spends 24/7 with her and might be contemplating killing her for all he knows. Even the world's hoopiest frood is going to have some fucking questions, even if he IS kinda turned on by the whole arrangement.
> 
> Meanwhile, I've only written like 1/4 of chapter 33 because I want to set it in this place that I haven't been to in FOREVER so I want to go there in-game for the purposes of research, but I can't find the place for love nor money and I'm not entirely sure I didn't dream it or something. It was a multi-story building of some kind filled with like... fucked up traps? In corridors? But there were also some wide-open spaces? Does anyone know where I'm talking about and if so could you let me know where it is, because I'm running around looking for it and I keep getting distracted by quests.   
> EDIT: Thanks guys!


	32. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon finally asks that question that's been bugging him for months now.

They stayed more than a week at the Slog. Charon never slept, but he let others take the watch, and roamed the boundaries of the settlement late at night. He found he liked it there. There was something about ghoul settlements; people tended to treat one another with a quiet kind of respect. Everyone lived with the same shame, the same hurt. Goodneighbor had none of that. Many of the ghouls there rejected shame. There were some — Kent was one, there might have been others — that might have preferred life here, if they’d had the courage for the journey, but if they had, they would have made the trek already.  
  
Hancock, of course, had no shame. The ghouls here looked at him with a kind of awe, and Charon couldn’t work out whether they were in thrall to his charms or whether it was something else. How many of them had lived in Diamond City, before they were cast out? Had they all known him then? It was difficult to imagine him as a human. Nevertheless, knowing there was a _reason_ people loved him… it made a difference.  
  
They took their time heading back south. Whatever else it was Sloan had intended to do had been utterly derailed by the deathclaw attack, and she seemed a bit lost. Rootless. They dealt with a few packs of ferals, some scavengers, molerats; nothing to truly test them. After a while it occurred to Charon that they were simply prolonging the journey.  
  
They passed through Oberland Station, where they had, long ago now, stopped to pick up MacCready.  
  
Sloan paused to fill up her canteen. A pretty young thing, hair cropped short, bounded out of the garden and, to Charon’s surprise, sidled up to Hancock.  
  
“Mayor Hancock!” she said, her eyes shining. “Can — can I give you the tour?”  
  
He broke into a grin, and slung a companionable arm around her shoulders. “Hey there, sister. Now, don’t you know you shouldn’t proposition a fella in front of his main squeeze? It ain’t polite.”  
  
She shot a look of alarm at Sloan, who grinned toothily at her.  
  
“We’re just passing through,” Hancock continued, “but you can bet I’ll be keeping you in mind. Okay?”  
  
“O-okay.” She blushed, and shot Sloan another nervous look before bolting back to her tatos.  
  
“You freaked her out,” Sloan chuckled as they followed the railroad south.  
  
“ _You_ freaked her out. Grinning at her like a lioness.”  
  
“What is there to tour?” Charon wondered aloud, looking back at the tiny settlement, and Sloan snickered.  
  
“Her bedroll, is what.” She caught the look on his face, and cackled.  
  
“Girls go crazy for that sexy king-of-the-zombies thing,” Hancock said with a rakish grin. “Ain’t that right, Sunshine?”  
  
“I can confirm we go crazy for that.”  
  
“But she’s…” Charon trailed off, aware a little too late that there was no diplomatic way to finish that sentence.  
  
“Pretty? Adorable? Charming?”  
  
“The sweetest piece of ass born this side of the twenty-second century?” Hancock chuckled.  
  
“I was _going_ to say ‘human’,” Charon grumbled.  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Hancock waved a hand, his lacy sleeves trailing extravagantly through the air. “That too.”  
  
They skirted the city to the west, until it became clear that it was time for Hancock to leave them, and they stopped on a hill overlooking the river. Still, he lingered.  
  
“So where’re you guys headed next?” he asked.  
  
“South, probably,” said Sloan. “There’s a tape down there somewhere and I want to get those horse bits for that guy Arlen.”  
  
“Ha! You’re seriously helping him with his toy?”  
  
“I am seriously helping him with his toy.”  
  
“You’re something else, you know that?”  
  
She ducked her head with a shy smile. “Well, there has to be _something_ about me that landed me the Mayor of Goodneighbor. Fella who has his pick of all the dames up and down the Commonwealth.”  
  
“And I picked the best.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Come say goodbye, Sunshine.”  
  
He pulled her behind a nearby tree, and Charon turned his back, almost amused. He could afford to think generously toward him, now he was leaving. Although, if he was honest with himself, Hancock didn’t bother him nearly as much as he used to.  
  
He heard their boots scraping on the dirt, and turned back to see them approach, their fingers tangling for just a moment before they parted. Hancock had a soft, almost whimsical look on his face. Then he blinked, and when he turned his gaze to Charon, any trace of softness had disappeared.  
  
“You take care’a her,” he said.  
  
Charon caught the sharp look in his eyes, and bit back a sarcastic response.  
  
“I will,” he said, and Hancock nodded.  
  
Charon watched him go. When his red coat had dwindled, and they lost sight of him among the buildings, he hesitated, and drew level with his mistress.  
  
“May I ask you something? About him?”  
  
“Of course.” She smiled expectantly up at him, as if she had been waiting for this question for a long time. And perhaps she had been.  
  
“How did you… how did that _happen?_ Between you.”  
  
She shrugged, kicking the toes of her boots into the dirt as she walked and sending up cascades of dust.  
  
“We were sitting on his roof one night, popping mentats and looking at the stars. I’d been flirting with him for weeks. I mean, I’d always had a thing for him, really. I barely knew what ghouls were, and I still —” She screwed up her face, and made a gesture of frustration. “ _Argh_.  And he impressed the crap outta me when he stabbed that guy. That was all _very_ confusing, by the way. I was a mess back then; Nate was dead, my kid was missing, a weird robot detective straight out of a noir flick was helping me find him, Boston was filled with bloodthirsty giants… and then there was _this guy_ and his goddamn swagger.” She shook her head. “My brain said, hey idiot, maybe avoid the dashing pirate zombie when you’re an emotional petri dish, it’s bad for your health. But then first thing I did after selling some stuff to Daisy was head up the stairs to his office to see if there was any work going. I’m not sure he thought much of me back then. Just some random drifter.”  
  
“Ha. Bullshit.” Charon smirked at her. “You do not know how different you are to the people here. You stand out. You cannot tell me he didn’t notice.”  
  
“Am I so different? That’s a thing you can tell, just from…? ” She trailed off, her face pensive. “Did _you_ notice? When we met?”  
  
He nodded. “Yes. You are from another world. You didn’t fit. Too soft.”  
  
She cocked her head to one side. “That’s interesting. I didn’t realise that.”  
  
“I did not know why you were different. Just that you were different.”  
  
They walked in silence for a moment or two, and he glanced at her, curious. They had digressed, and he wanted to hear the end of this story. He didn’t dislike listening to her talk, not the way he used to, and despite himself he was intrigued. He could understand — to a point — that she might have fallen for Hancock later, after becoming accustomed to ghouls. Not when she had been barely out of the vault.  
  
“Go on,” he prompted her.  
  
She blinked. “I’ve lost track of what I was saying.”  
  
“You were talking about the rooftop. But then earlier, when you met.”  
  
“…Right, right. I was finding my feet around Boston, mainly hanging out in Goodneighbor, running back to Diamond City now and then. MacCready and I cleared out these warehouses for Whitechapel Charlie and we were looking for more work, and we found this woman, Bobbi, who said she’d found a way to dig into this stockpile of treasure under Diamond City. Except there _isn’t_ a stockpile under Diamond City. We had no idea where we were heading underground, and when we climbed out of the tunnels we discovered she’d brought us into one of Hancock’s warehouses. Fahrenheit was waiting for us. That was when I discovered that nothing happens in Goodneighbor without Hancock getting wind of it somehow.” She smiled to herself. “So there was a stand off. Even if we took down Fahrenheit and the boys she had with her, that would still leave Hancock himself, and there was no way he’d just let that go.” She shook her head. “MacCready was shitting himself thinking I might side with Bobbi.”  
  
“And help her rip him off?” Even to Charon that seemed like a foolish idea. “How much was she paying you?”  
  
“Not enough.” She grinned. “No one would have helped her if she told them what she was actually doing, so she had to lie to get anyone to go along with her. She just wanted to get back at him for… being him, I guess. She said he was too big for his britches, or something, and no one wanted to do anything about it because they were either too damn afraid of him, or too damn in love with him.” She ducked her head, smiling at the memory. “I think MacCready oscillates between the two depending on how many drinks he’s had, and I was firmly in camp too-damn-in-love-with-him. Bobbi got a bullet instead of Hancock’s money. But Hancock figured if people were going to that kind of trouble just to piss him off, maybe he was turning into The Man, and he’d rather die than become like… well, like the mayor of Diamond City. And getting me to do his dirty work was the sort of thing the guys who ran Goodneighbor before him would do. Y’know… letting me take out Bobbi, even though he could have stopped us along the way. He used me to handle her. Being the Man, being the sort of person who does that kind of thing… he wasn’t happy with himself for it. He doesn’t want to manipulate people, or exploit them. If he’s doing something wrong, he wants people to tell him. He was worried he wasn’t getting his hands dirty enough, that it was changing him. Stuck in his lofty tower; separate from the people, instead of one of them. You know? So I said he could come with me, if he wanted to get blood under his fingernails again. The ones he has left, anyway.”  
  
“How long ago?”  
  
“Oh, this was… God, six, seven months ago? I’d been doing odd jobs, you know, getting a feel for the Commonwealth. Nick and I had been hunting for Shaun off and on.” She waved a hand. “Anyway. So a couple months later and I was sitting on his roof with him. We’d just got back from whatever we’d been doing and I was going to be heading out the next day and leaving him behind to do mayoral stuff, whatever that entails.”  
  
“I have often wondered,” Charon admitted.  
  
She grinned at him. “Yeah, it’s a mystery. Well, we’d… bonded, I guess, that week. We’d been talking, having these really deep conversations. We’d flirted in the past — he’s a flirty kind of guy — but I was never sure whether or not he _meant_ it, or whether he was just playing. He’d play around, but then sometimes he’d get really sort of reserved about it, you know, ‘I’ll admit to some impure thoughts’, that sort of thing. One day I just straight-up asked him if he wanted to be more than friends. And he blew me off!” She huffed, and rolled her eyes. “Like it was one-sided, on his side, and, you know, ‘don’t worry, I won’t let my affection for you interfere with this good thing we’ve got going’.” She made a face. “You can’t say something like that and just _end the conversation._ That’s some bullshit. Confused the hell out of me. I didn’t know if I should push things, whether he wanted or needed me to push things… or if I should just let it go. But chems make a lot of stuff clearer, especially mentats. I’d been afraid of scaring him off, or pushing too much, but all that crap fell away. We were sitting there and I told him how I felt. And he said he didn’t want anyone he cared about to have to wake up next to him.” She took a breath, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed. “So I kissed him. And it was all…” she waved a hand with a slightly embarrassed expression, “… you know, various kinds of romantic. Sitting on a roof under the stars, in the ruins of a once-great city.”  
  
Charon looked east, at the distant crumbling skyscrapers. Yes. He could see what she meant.  
  
“He likes being a ghoul less than he pretends,” he said.  
  
Sloan shook her head. “That’s not why he said what he said. I mean… it’s part of it, maybe. But it’s something for him to hide behind. He can pretend it’s all about the ghoul shit. He was giving me an out, and I think part of him was hoping I’d take it. It would make everything a lot simpler. But I am a stubborn person.”  
  
“I have noticed,” Charon teased her, and she smiled.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Really, though… a lot of ghouls do that, I think,” she said contemplatively. “Hide behind their faces. It’s easier to say ‘it’s the ghoul thing’ and use it so they don’t have to be close to people. Because people die. They grow old and fade away, they get sick, they get shot. They betray you and hurt you and leave you. It’s self-preservation. Never get close to anyone, never get hurt. Humans don’t get that luxury. Our lives are too short; we have to fuck and pop out some kids or humanity will die out. It’s easier to do that when you have trust. A family, or a village. Someone to help raise the next generation. But if you’re a ghoul, you don’t have to love someone ever again. And everyone will understand it. Because who would love a ghoul? Not even other ghouls, a lot of the time. It’s a good excuse, because most of them halfway believe it. That they’re unlovable.” She shrugged. “Hancock was doing it for different reasons, but it’s the same thing. And it’s crap, for the record.”  
  
Charon bit the inside of his cheek.  
  
“You say that like it is _my_ excuse,” he grumbled. “I have better excuses.”  
  
She laughed at that. “Fair enough. I wasn’t, really. You don’t need any excuses.” She paused, looking down at the ground as she walked, her thumbs tucked into her pockets. “Thank you, by the way.”  
  
“For?”  
  
“Giving Hancock a chance.” She smiled to herself. “You’re getting along better. That means a lot to me.”  
  
“I understand him better now,” he admitted. “Wiseman told me he tried to help the ghouls of Diamond City, back when he was human. He had no reason to do that.”  
  
“Yeah. He likes an underdog.” She scuffed the sole of her boot against the dirt. “Everyone should be free to live their lives. He believes that down to his bones. He hates your situation, but he’ll be on your side.”  
  
“I am not an underdog.”  
  
“He feels like you are. Chafing under the chains of oppression, and everything.” She looked up at him. “He’d be a good employer too, for what it’s worth. He’d give you as much freedom as he could.”  
  
“Chem-heads are not good employers. They are unreliable. Unpredictable.”  
  
“He’d look out for you.”  
  
He stopped. “Why are we having this conversation?”  
  
She huffed a sigh. “Well I don’t know, Charon. Maybe because I almost died the other day and it fucking matters what happens to you when I’m gone?”  
  
“Smoothskin —”  
  
“I haven’t talked to Nick yet. He’d be good, I mean, I think you two’d get along. He’s professional. Polite. A lot more responsible than any of my other friends. But I haven’t asked him yet and it might make him uncomfortable. Plus he’d probably have to leave Diamond City, if things there don’t change, and he likes it there. It’s his home.” She was looking out over Boston, her forehead furrowed in thought. “It’s a big thing, to ask someone to give up their home.”  
  
Charon pushed down on the stirrings of guilt. He didn’t want her to have to worry about this sort of thing. It was gratifying that she did — the Wanderer hadn’t — but there was no reason for it to wear on her. What happened to him after she was gone shouldn’t be on her radar.  
  
In fact the idea of her death itself shouldn’t be on her radar. He existed to prevent it. If he hadn’t failed to reach her before the deathclaw did, this wouldn’t be a problem. She wouldn’t be thinking about this. But he _had_ failed, and if Hancock hadn’t been there, it would have killed them both.  
  
“I should have been faster,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “With the deathclaw… I should have been faster. I will do better next time, mistress.”  
  
She shot him an impenetrable look over her shoulder.  
  
“I’m happy with your service, Charon. You don’t need to ‘do better’. You do good work.” She turned back to look out over the city again, and sighed. “I don’t want this weighing on you. The deathclaw thing. I’m alive, you’re alive. You did well.”  
  
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he nodded, and changed the subject.  
  
“Are we going to Diamond City?”  
  
She shrugged. “We can head there now and drop off this tape, or we can do it on the way back north. There’s another tape down south, near where the Atomatoys factory should be, but I’ve skirted that town before and there are a lot of Gunners hanging around down there. We’re talking fifteen, twenty Gunners, maybe more, a couple of suits of power armour at least.”  
  
He eyed her. By the time they had left the Slog she had recovered her strength, and it had been a couple of weeks, but they hadn’t faced a serious fight since the deathclaw. Brushes with death could imprint themselves on the mind, as evidenced by her early experience with ferals, and he wanted to make sure she was steady before throwing her into something as intense as a full complement of Gunners.  
  
“We can take them, if you are up to it,” he said cautiously.  
  
“I think I’m mostly back to normal,” she said, brushing a hand across the side of her throat almost subconsciously. She understood; of course she did. She had been in the army. She knew what it was for someone to see the face of death, and come out changed on the other side. “It’s hard to know without getting into some trouble first and seeing what happens.”  
  
“We could find some raiders.”  
  
She grinned at him. “All right.”  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mfw someone offers to show my bf around their settlement: (✿ ◡ ‿ ◡)
> 
> mfw I realise what they actually meant: (✿ ಠ ∩ಠ)
> 
>  
> 
> Sometimes I think about stimpaks, and how you could have this devastating injury, and then just bam, it's gone, no scar or anything. But you'd still have all the mental shit that goes along with, e.g., being impaled. I wonder if it might be a little worse, too, if there's nothing there physically to remind you it happened. If you'd wake up from nightmares about it and wonder whether it actually happened or if you're going mad. Not much in the way of trauma services counselling in the wasteland.
> 
> Edit: Fuck I forgot to mention, there will be occasional one-shots from Sloan's perspective over in my Chains Anthology series, you can check it out here http://archiveofourown.org/series/939024


	33. Holotape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloan seriously helps that guy with his toy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey shoutout to everyone who helped me with that raider maze thing I asked about the other day. I went there, I wrote the chapter, but then I decided the chapter was dumb and pointless so I scrapped it and here's this chapter instead. Thanks anyway! 
> 
> (Seriously, thanks.)

They found a handful of raiders on the outskirts of Boston. Sloan fought well, and while Charon would have preferred it if the raiders had put up a bit more of a fight, she did seem capable. They headed south-west, towards the coast, and eventually reached the ruin of a town the mistress referred to as Quincey.   
  
The place was _teeming_ with Gunners. Initially she was leery to take him with her, hoping to sneak past the Gunners to get the tape she needed, but they were spotted far too soon for that plan to work and it was a long and bloody fight. Eventually Sloan found herself a sniper’s nest and picked off most of those lingering on the overpass, and distracted the remaining two for long enough for Charon to get in close and flank them.   
  
The Atomatoys factory was guarded by super mutants, but after the Gunners they seemed more a chore than anything else.   
  
They returned to Quincey once she had the parts, and holed up in the old church, as settlers before them had done before they had been overrun. There was a fair amount of good loot here, but Sloan was distracted, poking at the parts of the toy horse she had spread out before her.   
  
“There is something on your mind,” Charon said eventually.  
  
“I was just wondering where we should go next,” she said, chewing on her lip. “The next tape’s up in Nahant somewhere. The last one. It might be quicker just to head straight through Boston without stopping, hit Nahant and the Slog at the same time. But we also have this key card now, so I can finally get past that locked door in the Atomatoys head office. There might be something else there Arlen would want, and it’d save heading there twice.”  
  
“More baubles?” Charon made a face.  
  
She smiled at him. “Yes, more baubles. I’d like to check, anyway. Might be nothing there.”  
  
As far as Charon was concerned, there _was_ nothing there. Sloan spent a great deal of time sifting through the records kept on the office terminals, reading the memos, while he stalked the halls for more super mutants. She had to check every damn terminal, even _after_ she’d found the safe in the manager’s office. What could possibly be so fucking interesting?  
  
She was quiet, on their way back through the building. Once or twice she almost tripped over a super mutant’s corpse.  
  
“Nahant, or the Slog?” he asked as they stepped back into the sunlight.  
  
“The Slog,” she said.  
  
She didn’t stop in at Diamond City, or even Goodneighbor, to Charon’s surprise. He had thought she would at least have stopped to say hello to Hancock, but she was determined not to be distracted, and they made good time heading north. That night by the fire, she slipped a holotape into her pip-boy, and he found out why.  
  
“Glass’s daughter?” he asked, when the tape had clicked to a stop.   
  
“Yes. A couple of the memos in the offices mentioned her. Apparently she came to visit, just a couple of days before the bombs, but he was too busy to see her.” She chewed on her lip, brushing road dust off the screen of her pip-boy. “Can you imagine how much regret he has over that?”  
  
Charon couldn’t. He said nothing.  
  
At the Slog, she stopped for the briefest of moments to exchange greetings with Wiseman. Then she made her way to the little shed where Glass worked, the toy parts in her hands, the tape in her back pocket.  
  
Charon waited outside, leaning against the wall. This was a private matter, one on which he had no wish to intrude. Still, their voices drifted out onto the courtyard. Glass’s voice was old, rasping, even by ghoul standards, and he wondered absently how old the man had been when he turned.   
  
When she had given him the parts he wanted, Sloan hesitated.  
  
“Are you… Arlen Glass, the toy designer?”  
  
“I am. Where did you hear that?”  
  
Instead of answering, she pressed on. “Did you have a daughter?”  
  
The old ghoul sighed. “Marlene. She died, in the war. I… wasn’t the best father. Too old, worked too much. In the end, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”  
  
“I think I have something that belongs to you.” There was a rustle as she pulled the holotape from her pocket.  
  
“A… holotape? Let’s see now…”  
  
Charon had heard it several times, on the trip north. His mistress had played it repeatedly, as if it had somehow changed from the first time she’d heard it. This time, of course, was different. Glass’s joy, and his grief, were intense.  
  
“Oh, god… Marlene… I… I… Give me a minute.”  
  
Sloan walked out onto the courtyard to give the man some space, and stood beside Charon in the sun. Her face was impassive, but he knew her well enough by now to guess she was barely holding it together. She waited a minute or two, and then she went back inside.  
  
“I never thought I’d hear their voices again,” he heard Glass croak. “You can’t imagine what this means to me.”  
  
“What happened to them?”  
  
“We had an apartment in Cambridge. I went to the office that day, to try to talk to Mark again. When… when it all… happened, I tried to get back, but the city was in chaos. By the time I got home, there was only a crater. I lay down in the ruins, I… I just wanted to die. Instead, I woke up like this.”  
  
Only a crater. Not even their bodies. In some ways Charon was glad he had no memory of the war, of anyone he might have known then. He had never dealt with loss. There were stretches of time — years — when all he had felt was anger. Anger, fear, frustration. Never grief.   
  
“It’s a… long story, but I lost my husband and my son, too.”  
  
Charon straightened. He hadn’t thought about that. Perhaps the message, the girl on the tape, reminded her of her own family. She understood grief. Grief and loss… Her family, her world, the future she had planned. She carried things around with her that he could barely imagine.   
  
“Then maybe can you understand,” Glass was saying. “She was right, you know. I did work too much. Now, I’ll… never hear her voice again. Never get to hold her. Never kiss her goodnight. All I have left are the memories… and this tape. As one parent to another: thank you.”  
  
“All those years… You never gave up, did you?” She hummed a quiet laugh. “You’re still working too much.”  
  
“I suppose so. We made toys. We made children happy. That’s all that mattered. And as long as I can still do that, I will. It’s the least I can do, for her.”  
  
“What now?”  
  
“I…” He took a shaky breath, “I can’t possibly repay you for this. Here, here, take everything I have. It’s not much…”  
  
“No, no, Arlen, please.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“Arlen, please. Keep your money. I want you to keep it. Okay? I just… the tape was yours. You had to have it back. I don’t want payment for that.”  
  
“…Thank you.”  
  
Charon heard the sound of the holotape starting again, and Sloan walked through the door, past him, out towards the fence, and he followed her.  
  
She walked until they were out of sight of the Slog before she sank to the ground, and started to cry. Charon sighed, and lowered himself to the ground beside her, stretching out on his back in the sun. This seemed as if it was going to take a while.  
  
After a few moments, she collapsed onto him, burying her face in his chest and sobbing as if the world had ended. Which, for her and Glass both, it had done.  
  
He let her cry herself out. After a while he reached out, gingerly, to slide an arm around her back. When she had stilled and her tears had stopped, he asked her the question.  
  
“Did it remind you of your family? The tape. You kept playing it.”  
  
She pushed herself up so she could look at him, sniffling. “No,” she said. “I just kept thinking that he hadn’t heard those voices in two hundred years. No one had. We were the first to hear them since the bombs dropped. This little girl died centuries ago and her voice is still here, we can still listen to it. Like a part of her is alive again.”  
  
“I had not thought of it like that.”   
  
She turned, pulling her knees up, and fiddled with her pip-boy.   
  
“I have a tape,” she said, pulling it from her pocket and slotting it into the device.   
  
_“Oops. Ah, keep those little fingers away… there we go. Just say it. Right there. There. Go ahead.”_ It was a male voice, soft, happy in a way no one seemed to be any more. There was the sound of a baby making the noises babies do, but that seemed sufficient for the man, who laughed. _“Ah? Haha, yay! Hi honey…Listen. I don’t think Shaun and I have to tell you how great of a mother you are —”_  
  
She switched the tape off, and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees.   
   
Charon realised with a sudden chill that he had buried that man.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing himself upright.  
  
“Nate was sweet and strong and kind, and they shot him like it was nothing.” She sighed. “And Shaun… For the longest time I just wanted to find him. And then I _did_ and he wasn’t my baby any more. He hadn’t been my baby since they took him from Nate’s arms. I thought he was a kid, that maybe… maybe he was happy where he was. I was so scared that he wouldn’t feel like my child any more, that to him I’d just be some weirdo who thought I was his mother. But he knew. He was eighty years old, and he knew. He _wanted_ me to kill Kellogg. He was manipulating me. I just… I wish it had been different. I wish I’d… I don’t know. That I’d woken earlier. That we could have had some sort of time together.”  
  
Charon put an arm around her shoulders, and she leant into him, just a little.   
  
“We should go somewhere you like,” he said. That’s what Hancock would do; he had brought her here, to the Slog, to cheer her up, to help her feel safe. But it wouldn’t cheer her now. They would have to go somewhere else, and Charon didn’t have enough knowledge of the Commonwealth to know where that might be. “Somewhere that makes you happy, mistress.”  
  
She sighed. “Nowhere in this hellhole makes me happy.”  
  
He looked down at her in surprise. “There’s Goodneighbor. You like Goodneighbor.”  
  
“I _like_ it. I feel at home there. But it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me sad.” She looked up at him, her eyes wet. “You understand? I think of what it used to be, before Hancock and his boys killed the ones in charge before them. I think of the ghouls who never made it there after Diamond City. It’s full of people who have nowhere else to go. I knew this place, the Commonwealth, back when it was _whole_. When children could play on the beach, when you could go fishing in the streams or walk around without needing a gun. Everything in this wasteland used to be safer, sweeter, more beautiful, more alive.” She shook her head, and looked away. “Everywhere has a memory of a better time. Everywhere I look, I can see it how it used to be.”  
  
“Don’t be sad,” he said, and then cursed himself for it. The most stupid possible thing to say.  
  
She swallowed, and nodded. “I try. Most of the time, I’m fine. I’ve found a lot in the wasteland to love. It’s just,” she took a sharp breath in, “sometimes it’s hard. I’ll meet someone like Arlen, who’s lost everything and spent the last two hundred years mourning and trying to scrape together some meaning in this place... It just reminds me how cruel the world is.”  
  
Charon rested his forehead, just for a moment, against her hair.   
  
“I will find you somewhere that makes you happy,” he said to her.   
  
She turned, and wound her arms around his neck.  
  
“You’re so good to me, killer,” she said, nestling her face against his neck in a way that made his breath catch and his mind short-circuit. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”  
  
“You shot a Gunner,” he said numbly.  
  
She chuckled. “So I did.”  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arlen's scene is all game dialogue. Honestly I cried. I already wanted to wrap everyone in the Slog up in cotton wool and Arlen's story is so saaaaaaaad. I mean GOD, you give him his kid's voice back after 200 years, and she's telling him how much she misses him. And then he tries to give you everything he has, which is fuck all. Like. Stop it, man, you're breaking my heart.


	34. Nahant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fuck this entire peninsula.

  
  
There was one final tape, located on the second floor of an all but demolished police station on Nahant peninsula. The road was camped out by Gunners, and rather than tangle with them and their assaultron they crept by under cover of darkness. The tape she retrieved with minimal difficulty, slipping from one precarious slab of floor to another while Charon stood below, chewing on the inside of his cheek and peering into the shadows.  
  
Afterward she stood on a fall of rubble, clicking through her pip-boy.  
  
“There’s a church near here I read about in some dead scavver’s note,” she said. “It’s supposed to have a cache of chems. You mind if we swing by?”  
  
“Would you not prefer to wait until day? We do not know what we are walking into.”  
  
“You’re the bodyguard,” she said, as if that entitled him to some kind of authority on the subject. She smothered a yawn. “Let’s crash here, then. This rubble’s stayed up for two hundred years, it’s probably unlikely to fall down, right?”  
  
They made camp out from under the remaining scraps of ceiling, all the same. The police station at least provided some cover to the east, though Charon was on edge all night.  
  
They were moving at dawn, picking their way through what must have once been an up-market village towards the church at the far end of the peninsula. The houses were made of wood, large, and Sloan looked around the pre-dawn grey with a sense of almost peace.  
  
“If you pretend,” she said, “it’s almost like before the war. The trees, the big beautiful houses… if you pretend it’s winter, I mean. It’s nice here. I wonder why there aren’t more people around? The Gunners, I guess… hard to set up a settlement if there’s always some asshole on your bridge.”  
  
“If it was not the Gunners, it would be someone else,” Charon said. “A good place to waylay traders and travellers. There may well have been a settlement here, once.”  
  
He was much less relaxed than his mistress. As they had moved through the old village, an uneasy feeling had stolen over him, and he gripped his shotgun. Something was pricking at the edges of his brain, some sort of danger a part of him had seen or heard that hadn’t filtered through to his conscious mind. He stopped, turning, trying to work out what it was he’d missed.   
  
By the time he heard them they were already too close. Half a dozen ferals, maybe more, launched themselves out of the early morning gloom and threw themselves at Sloan, making that hideous croaking sound. She screeched as one of them darted in close, firing her shotgun and missing. Charon shot it in the back, and it barely flinched. He felt his throat tighten and fired again, distracting it for only a moment before it launched itself back at Sloan. There were too many, they were too strong. Sloan was firing her gun, as quickly as she could, but she had to stop to reload and they clawed at her, dragging her gun away, and it was all she could do to push them off herself. Her pip-boy’s Geiger counter ticked every time one of them took a swipe at her. Charon shot the injured feral again, in the back of the head, and finally it dropped. But there were more, too many more, swarming over his mistress.  
  
Charon was beginning to panic. He couldn’t see well enough in the low light, couldn’t keep track of her in the mass of bodies. Sloan was desperately trying to fight them off, making a high-pitched, strangled sound of terror that got into his head and closed off his thought processes. He couldn’t shoot without risking hitting her. He was fighting to retain control but her terror was thick in the air and it was too hard, too hard to fight on two fronts at once. The contract was winning.   
  
One of the ferals threw itself on top of her, dragging her down, and Charon lost control.  
  
He snarled, grabbing for the feral on top of her. He curled his fingers under its chin and _wrenched_ until the head parted from the neck, blood spurting out over the asphalt. He grabbed for the next, and pressed the muzzle of his gun against its head, pulling the trigger over and over until it went limp. He closed his fists around the neck of a third, squeezing as it clawed at him, squeezing until blood began to leak out of its eyes. Another and another and another. He ripped them apart.   
  
He pressed his thumbs into the eyes of the last one until the skull gave under his hands, and it was done.  
  
Charon stood, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his hands as he slowly came back to himself. It had been a long time since he had lost control of himself that way, and it deeply disturbed him. He found himself clenching his hands spasmodically. He was starting to shake, just a little, and he grimaced to himself. Losing control in these moments was the closest he’d come to turning feral himself and one of his worst fears was that one day he wouldn’t come back.   
  
A black dread stole over him. Sloan was nowhere to be seen, and he could only hope that she had found somewhere safe to hide. How many ferals had there been? Only seven? She was not screaming, but that meant very little. She might be unconscious, or hurt.   
  
“Sloan?”   
  
He turned, searching for a sign of her. A smear of blood on the road… a feral’s blood, he had to hope. He followed it, calling her name. It would attract attention, probably more ferals, but better they came after him than her. He reloaded his shotgun as he walked, ears sharp, eyes searching the gloom of the morning for any sign of movement.   
  
“Sloan. Please.”  
  
He searched until the sun rose above the distant roof of the church. He found nothing. There were houses here, but they were boarded up; if she had found some tiny crack to squeeze through he would never be able to follow her in. He finally decided to backtrack toward where he had fought the ferals, and halfway down the road his eyes caught on a figure hunched behind the rusted carcass of a car, hidden amongst the trees and bushes.   
  
He breathed a sigh of relief, and picked his way down the incline towards her. She had drawn herself up into a protective ball. Her face was hidden, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms braced defensively around her head. She was shaking.  
  
Charon crouched down beside her, and reached out, but before he could touch her she flinched away, becoming smaller still.   
  
He swallowed. She had been terrified by ferals, and here was a _ghoul_ trying to comfort her. He felt disgusting, ashamed and, worse, he hated the tiny part of himself that was _hurt_ that in her fear she did not recognise him.   
  
“Sloan… Smoothskin, it’s me.”   
  
She didn’t move. If anything she seemed to curl further into herself. Charon sighed, and sat back against the car.   
  
What was it she had said to him, back when they had only known each other a few weeks? That she hid under things, tried to be small? And… something about the nerves, about breathing. Hugs, that was it. Tight.  Well… he might not have had much practice, but still, hugs he could do.   
  
He wiped the blood from his hands with a corner of his shirt, and then he leant over and scooped her up into his lap.   
  
For a moment she fought, and he didn’t know what to do. She was pushing at him, making chittering sounds he couldn’t decipher, and he tightened his grip more out of alarm than anything else. He saw the flash of the whites of her eyes, felt the ineffectual pressure of her hands at his chest as she struggled. And then she stopped. She took a great gulp of air, and she _clung_ to him.  
  
Charon loosened his grip, awkwardly rubbing a hand against her back, but she made a sound of protest and locked her arm around his neck until he clasped her tight again. A few minutes passed without her moving, and Charon was beginning to wonder what he was meant to do next. His arm was beginning to cramp, and sooner or later she would need to eat, and they would have to find someplace safe to hunker down… He tried rubbing at her back again, feeling helpless, and then she pulled back to look at him. She was pale, and drawn.  
  
“Okay?” he asked. “You said… you said hugging helped. A long time ago, at the farm.”  
  
She nodded, and swallowed. “Thank you,” she said, her voice croaking. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”  
  
He let her go, and she stood up, pushing her hair back from her face. She had cried plenty of times since he’d met her, but she hadn’t cried today. Instead there was a haunted look about her, a desperate fear that hadn’t quite ebbed away. There was blood on her shirt, her jacket, dried on the side of her face, but he couldn’t work out if it was hers or whether it had come from the ferals. If she’d been hurt, at least she’d had the presence of mind to use a stimpak.   
  
Charon got to his feet, following her out towards the road.  
  
“I did it right? I wasn’t sure… you fought me.”  
  
“It’s just the panic response. Fight or flight, you know.” She stopped and turned, her eyes sliding over the trees. She tried to clear her throat, and swallowed. “You did the right thing. I should have mentioned that part but I mean… back then I didn’t think…” She shrugged. “A-are you…? You w-went weird.”  
  
He closed his eyes against the momentary wave of shame. “The contract.”  
  
He could feel her looking at him, weighing him.  
  
“The contract?”  
  
“I lost control. I apologise.” He opened his eyes to see her watching him, her head tilted to one side.  
  
“Why? You couldn’t help it. And anyway you killed them.”  
  
“It was too hard to fight the contract and the ferals. You were… making this… this sound. I couldn’t think.”  
  
“It’s okay —”  
  
He shook his head. “No. You don’t — no. One day I will lose control and not come back. I will turn feral and I don’t know… I don’t know if the contract will protect you if I’m feral.” He fought against the urge to take a step back, away from her.   
  
She gave him a slow nod, and looked out towards the pile of feral corpses on the road.  
  
“Let’s not talk about that now,” she said, and reached for his hand. “Come on.”  
  
This time he _did_ step back. He could see the calculation on her face as she dropped her hand. She understood.   
  
She led the way back to the road, and they walked down the hill together to the pile of corpses. She nudged one, its head hanging from its body by a strip of skin.  
  
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Remind me not to piss you off.”  
  
Charon swallowed. “This will only happen when you are in significant danger,” he told her. “I cannot harm you, I… I am _nearly certain_ I cannot harm you in these circumstances. The contract should stop me before I harm you. Unless I go feral.”  
  
“That would be pretty bad,” she said, prodding a feral’s corpse with her toe. “Did you crush this one’s skull? That’s fucking horrifying. And bad-ass.”  
  
“I lost control,” he repeated.  
  
“I know. You did good. I’m _deeply_ impressed.”  
  
He reached forward to grab her arm, and turned her to face him. He leant down a little, making sure she was watching, making sure she was paying attention.   
  
“If this happens again, mistress, you need to run. Like you did today. Promise me you will run.”  
  
She nodded haltingly, her brows pinched together.   
  
“You can’t harm me,” she said. Attempting to reassure.  
  
“ _Unless I go feral_. If I go feral I will kill you. I do not want to kill you.”  
  
She looked away, and let out a shaking breath. “And I don’t want to be killed by a giant feral who used to be someone I cared about.” Her eyes flicked back to his face, large and serious. “You’ll be difficult to put down. You know that.”  
  
“Yes.” He grimaced. “You should not try.”  
  
“I’m gonna try. Friends don’t let friends go grey. Friends shoot friends in the head before they let them go grey. That’s the rule.”  
  
He straightened with a small sigh. “Life is not a zombie flick.”  
  
“And yet look how many life lessons zombie flicks have unexpectedly taught me.” She reached up to clasp his arm. “C’mon, let’s go find those chems.”   
  
She turned from the pile of dead ferals, and led the way back up the hill, scuffing the soles of her boots on the ground as she walked.   
  
“I guess we ought to hang around until nightfall,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m in a state to go fighting assaultrons right now.”  
  
A wise decision. If she hadn’t suggested it, Charon would have. He nodded.  
  
The church was at the far end of the street, past a large manor house, and he was surprised when she did not investigate the imposing building. At the very least he had expected her to check out the workbench on the veranda. None of the doors had been boarded up. There might have been something interesting in there, and whenever there was the opportunity for something interesting she was usually up to her knees in it.   
  
“You do not wish to explore the house?” he asked her.  
  
She shook her head. “I don’t trust houses with ferals around. You’ll be unlocking a drawer or something and one will materialise behind you and latch its teeth into your neck. No. And if there’s a _locked door_ in a feral house you never, ever open it. There is _always_ another one inside and it’s usually a particularly terrifying one.”  
  
“You learnt this from zombie flicks?”  
  
“I learnt it from _experience._ ” She shot him a look, one brow arched. “There’s a suburb southwest of Boston, nice place. Couple of yao-guai like to hang out there but they’re easy to avoid if you’re quiet. There was evidence of raiders or scavvers around, you know, tin can warnings set up, food, chems… but no actual raiders. A few ferals, though. I cleaned them out and then I found this makeshift ladder up into this house and you just _know_ there’s got to be something good in there, right? Raider stash. So I went up.”  
  
“And there were more ferals?”  
  
“Yes. Ferals, a dead raider, and a locked door.”  
  
“You opened the door.”  
  
“I opened the door.” She pressed her lips into a thin line, her eyes on the ground as she walked. “There were three ferals in there. The raiders must have locked them in or something… there were three ferals and one was a Glowing One. I mean I try, I really do, but I don’t manage well fighting ferals, they get in too close and I can’t manoeuvre my gun, and the Glowing Ones are so hard to put down and the radiation coming off those things… I fucking fell off the roof trying to get away. Managed to kill it eventually but it took a psycho, two stimpaks and a lot of rad-X. Lesson learnt. Do not unlock mysterious doors in feral-infested places.”  
  
They paused in front of the church. It had occurred to Charon that there would probably be a couple of ferals inside, and it seemed to occur to her too. She was staring up at the building with a bleak look on her face.  
  
“I will go inside,” he told her. “I will kill anything there. Yell if you need me, okay, smoothskin?”  
  
He took a few steps towards the church but then she jolted forward and grabbed at his hand.   
  
“Please,” she said, her face contorting. “D-don’t…”  
  
“There may be ferals.”  
  
“I know.” She took a shaky breath. “I’ll come with you. I just need a minute.”  
  
There was only one feral inside, and Sloan hung back as Charon put it down. He led the way through the church, checking each room, every corner where a feral could be hiding, but the place was clean. They found the stash of chems on the second floor. It didn’t seem worth it.  
  
“We should stay here until dark,” Charon said. She seemed more settled now, but he’d rather not take chances. “We know it is safe in here. Then we can sneak past the Gunners.”  
  
“You’re the boss,” she said.  
  
“I am not the boss. _You_ are the boss.” He fought to keep himself from smiling. “The mistress enjoys teasing.”  
  
“The mistress does,” she said, settling herself on an ancient sofa.   
  
She pulled her sleeping bag from her pack, and draped it over her head like a padded cowl.   
  
“Blankets keep the monsters out,” she explained when he gave her a curious look. “That’s a rule.”  
  
“From a zombie flick?”  
  
She snorted a laugh. “No! From — you know. Nursery stuff. Do you remember any of that? The things kids do, like ring-around-the-roses or the-floor-is-lava. Monsters under the bed can’t get past the blanket.”  
  
“Why would I remember that?”  
  
She shrugged. “Sometimes memory loss takes specifics but not, like, general things. You don’t forget how to ride a bike or do a puzzle but you forget having ever learnt how, that sort of thing. I thought maybe there was something in there that survived.”  
  
He sat down on the sofa beside her, and resisted the urge to put an arm around her shoulders.   
  
“Some things,” he admitted. “Songs I do not remember hearing. Smells that seem familiar, but that I can’t place.”  
  
“Smell is weird. It’s the sense we suck the most at, but olfactory memories are some of the strongest. Your grandfather’s favourite tobacco. Your dad’s shoe polish. Your mother’s perfume.” She leant into him, just a little. “The vault had a smell. Stale air and old bones and this… this cold, sort of metallic smell. I didn’t notice it until I went back in the second time, and it brought it all back.”  
  
“How many times have you gone down there?”  
  
“Four, counting the time you and I went down. Second time I just wanted to… to know it was real, you know?” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Third time I wanted to show John around. It was important that he knew. And I know it’s stupid, but I wanted him to meet Nate.”  
  
Charon found himself deeply curious as to what Hancock’s reaction had been. Meeting the girlfriend’s dead husband, handsome and untouched by time or decay? Even Hancock could not have been unaffected by that. The man he had to live up to. The man who died protecting her son.  
  
“And? How did he take it?”  
  
She gave him a sidelong look.  
  
“Hancock doesn’t dwell on things. Or he tries not to, anyway.”  
  
“The chems,” Charon hazarded.  
  
“The chems. So I’m not sure he ever really thought about the details of… my situation. He knew, of course. I’d tell him things about the past. He liked that. He knew about Shaun, and Nate, and my job, and everything. But it was distant for him, you know? Just a story. When I took him down there, it became real. All those dead, frozen people. He was pretty quiet.”  
  
He nodded, then paused as he glanced at her. There was something about her eyes, something about the colour of her face that didn’t sit right with him.  
  
“Are you…”  
  
She looked up at him, and sighed, rubbing at her forehead with her fingertips. “Yeah. I should take a rad-away, I’m just… putting it off.”  
  
“One of them bit you?”  
  
“No. They were tough, yeah? They must have had extra radiation in them or something. There must be a source around here somewhere. Maybe just the ocean. It always makes it worse when they’re oozing radiation. Adds another level of fear to the situation.”  
  
“You should have said something,” he scolded her, and went to her pack to retrieve a rad-away.  
  
“I didn’t want the headache,” she confessed. “It’s fine, honestly. My radiation levels aren’t so bad.”  
  
“Are you certain?”  
  
“It’s on my pip-boy, if you want to check. Vital stats.”   
  
She held it up to him, and he crossed the room to take her wrist in his hand and investigate the small screen.  
  
“Too high,” he growled, and dropped the rad-away into her lap. “Take the damn chem.”  
  
She gave a deep and theatrical sigh, and flung out her right arm.  
  
“Will you do it?” she asked him, her head lolling back on the sofa.  
  
He stared at the stretch of soft, white skin on the inside of her forearm, and grimaced. It was fucking torment, her skin. Too smooth. Ghouls were sparing with touch as a rule; other ghouls reminded them of what they were and humans reminded them of what they weren’t. And no one wanted to touch ghouls. A century or two of limited physical contact meant it was easy for any ghoul to be overwhelmed. Small touches Charon was getting used to: her hands, when she wasn’t wearing gloves; her small wrist, for half a heartbeat, just moments before. But her face nuzzled into his neck the other day had overloaded his mind.  
  
This aversion was something Sloan seemed to be aware of on some level, even if she didn’t really understand it. To ask him to do this, she would have to be feeling unwell.  
  
He became aware that he was staring, and met her eyes. She was looking at him with a curious expression, a line between her brows.  
  
“I asked,” she said, “I didn’t order. You don’t have to.”  
  
He grimaced, and reached for the rad-away. If he didn’t do it, she might decide she didn’t want the damn chem after all.   
  
She pushed up the sleeve of her jacket, pulling it tight around her upper arm, and he took her elbow in one hand. He could follow the line of her vein from the inside of her wrist all the way along her forearm to her elbow.   
  
“Good veins, right?” she said. “I’ve always had good veins. Phlebotomists always liked me. Not as good as _yours_ , but you have hardly any skin on your left arm so you have an unfair advantage.”  
  
Charon snorted. He ran his thumb over the puffing vein in her elbow, and tried to ignore her cool skin against his hand as he slid the needle into her vein.   
  
She leant her cheek on her shoulder to better see his face. “Thank you,” she said.  
  
He nodded, and grimaced.   
  
“It’s a good thing normal ghouls don’t get me all irradiated. That would _suck_.” She propped up the IV bag on the back of the sofa and turned to lie down, her sleeping bag spread out beneath her, her legs hanging over the sofa’s arm. “Will you sit with me?”  
  
He sank down onto the sofa beside her, her head beside his thigh.  
  
“You okay, smoothskin?” he asked her. She looked tired, and drawn, like her skin was pulled too tight.  
  
“Getting there.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to deal with, the whole fear-of-ferals thing. I wish I could have been more helpful.”  
  
Charon growled at the back of his throat. “Did you not hear me, smoothskin? I told you, if that happens again I want you to run. You did the right thing.”  
  
“But if I hadn’t been _scared_ , I wouldn’t have made you go all…” she waved a hand, “…you know. If I was a better employer —”  
  
“You are a good employer. You do just fine.”  
  
She chewed on her bottom lip, and nodded.  
  
“I just… I don’t want to be the reason you turn feral.”  
  
That was a punch to the gut. The air stilled in his lungs, and Charon stared down at her, unmoving, until his chest hurt, and he took a sharp breath.  
  
“No,” he said.   
  
He reached down to brush a lock of hair away from her forehead, and swallowed against the lump in his throat.   
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing some emotional shit for future chapters and it's like... man. It's a relief to go back to some old angst that is less painful. 
> 
> Also Charon going all Grognak the Barbarian is p hot. *fans self*
> 
> Hey so I start grad school in a couple of weeks, and there's a lot of reading involved. Now I mean last semester I was like "readings or working on fanfiction? obviously the latter" but I should probably become a better organised person this year. Make writing my reward for getting my work done. So if posts slow down, don't worry, I'm still here.


	35. Raiders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad day.

  
  
He didn’t see the one that circled around to flank him.  
  
They were headed west, just for the hell of it. Back when they had first met, Sloan had led him up around a group of settlements almost on a whim. They’d spent weeks exploring the hills. That roaming instinct had taken root in her again, and they had been wandering for a week, just seeing what they could find, when they had stumbled upon the raiders.  
  
They’d already taken down most of them. Their leaders had fallen, but some raiders could be tenacious shits and these ones just wouldn’t die. The mistress was who-knows-where, and the contract was beginning to dig in its teeth, and he was more interested in locating _her_ than the woman he was meant to be shooting. He realised too late he’d lost track of her.  
  
The first shot hit him in the side below his armour, shattering a rib. The second went through his thigh as he turned, but he got off a few rounds before the pain hit him, and he saw her fall just before his leg gave out. He collapsed against the car he’d been using for cover, and watched her body for a heartbeat or two, until he was satisfied she was dead. He tried to lean around the side of the vehicle to get an idea of where his mistress was, whether she was okay without him.  
  
The pain was starting to fog his head, but there was enough adrenaline in his system to keep him focused, for now. Protecting the employer was still his number one priority, wounded or not, but there was little he could do for her in this state. He’d been shot before, many times, and he knew that the bullet in his side at least would need to be cut out. That meant no stimpaks, or his flesh would heal over the bullet and he might never find the fucking thing. That was a problem. It meant the mistress would be on her own for this fight.  
  
He spotted her at last, making her way to him across a break in cover.  
  
“Charon, Jesus fuck —”  
  
“I will be fine,” he said, though now he looked, there was a lot of blood in the dirt. Really a lot of blood. He was starting to feel a bit light-headed, and wondered idly if shock was setting in.  
  
She crouched beside him, her quick hands fluttering over his leg, checking his thigh for an exit wound before grabbing a roll of bandages from her pack. She wound it tight around his leg, the pressure making spots flare in his vision. He grabbed for her hand instinctively, to stop her, but she batted it away. She didn’t look up.  
  
“The thigh is a through and through,” she said, hands moving to prod at his ribs, his back. “The chest looks like it’s lodged in there. Can’t give you a stimpak yet.” She passed him a cloth and guided his hand to press it against his side. “Keep your head down, I’m going to thin out their ranks.”  
  
He grit his teeth, more out of frustration than pain. He did not like leaving her to fight alone, though he knew he would be little use. At least he could take out one or two from this position. He dropped the cloth into the dirt and picked up his rifle, ignoring the blood on his hands. The grip would be slippery, but he would cope.  
  
He pulled himself to his knees, thigh screaming in protest, and aimed through the car window to pop a raider between the eyes, but his shot drew the attention of the others, and he had to duck back against the car as a lucky bullet grazed his temple. It must have stung but the pain was lost in the background of the rest of it, the stabbing in his ribs every time he took a breath, the burning ache in his thigh. Bullets dinged into metal, and he fought against wooziness. He was losing too much blood; it was seeping through the cloth tied around his thigh, oozing dark and sticky at his side. He was beginning to feel cold, truly cold, for the first time in a long, long while.  
  
He shook his head, trying to clear it, fighting against the dizziness. The pain was pressing in on him, taking up more and more of his mind with every breath. The world was beginning to pull away. There really _was_ a lot of blood. Too much blood. It was pouring down his face, pulsing through his bandage. He watched it with a sense of agonised detachment, watched the puddle grow, and realised in a distant sort of way that he was dying. And that… didn’t seem so bad.  
  
Sloan was back, her hands at his thigh, adjusting the bandage, and he hissed in pain. They weren’t all dead yet; why was she back? She was pressing herself against his uninjured side, trying to get him off the ground.  
  
“Charon, we need to move.”  
  
He tried to concentrate on her, but she kept slipping away somehow.  
  
“Go,” he managed to say. There were still bullets flying.  
  
“No, the car’s on fire, it’s going to blow. We _have to move_.”  
  
“Leave me,” he spluttered. He was so tired, and she, she shouldn’t be here. “Leave me, let me die.”  
  
She swore at him.  
  
“Fuck you, Charon, get up. That’s an order. Charon, get up.”  
  
He groaned, and heaved himself to his feet. Pain shot through him, but he couldn’t fall, _get up_ the mistress had said, and the contract would dig its thorns into him if he did not obey. One day there would be a pain too great, greater than the contract’s punishments, greater than his indoctrination. Not today. Today the mistress spoke, and he must move.  
  
He couldn’t see; there was blood in his eyes, stinging, his vision was clouded and dark, but he felt warmth at his side and an arm around his back and he could hear her, couldn’t make out the words but he could hear her urging him on, her voice tight and frantic, the pop of her pistol as she tried to keep them covered. Then the car exploded, close enough to throw them both to the ground, hot, bright against his eyelids, a piece of shrapnel embedding itself in his shoulder.  
  
He’d landed partly on top of her, and in his half-conscious state was glad if he could have sheltered her from the blast, protected her in one last, small way. She was squirming against him, pushing him up, but he was done, he was done, he couldn’t move any more.  
  
“ _Walk_ , Charon! That’s an order! Walk!”  
  
He wanted to weep. His body moved almost against his will, pulling his legs under him, muscles bunching, and he lurched upright. She was pressed up against his side again, her breath hissing through her teeth, and she pushed him on, on, until they were inside a building and she left him there against the wall.  
  
He didn’t know how long she was gone. Time bled together, left him suspended, floating in a world of agony. He coughed up some of the blood pooling in his lungs, grunting at the pain that lanced through him with each spasm of his ribs. The sound of gunshots seemed further off than it possibly could be. He was bleeding out onto the ground and he knew it, and he was glad, in a way, that he was able to die alone. It was peaceful. He lowered his head, and let himself drift.  
  
A hand on his shoulder brought him back to consciousness. Cloth was pressed against the wound on his head, and she wiped the blood from his eyes so he could see her, her hair matted with blood, her eyes narrowed.  
  
“Mmmistrs… bleeding.” He lifted a hand to touch her matted hair.  
  
She caught his hand and squeezed it. “No. It’s yours, you bled on me. I’m okay. Don’t move, Charon, I’m taking the thing out of your shoulder and then I’m… I guess I’m going to cut you open and get that bullet out.”  
  
“’m dying.”  
  
“Yeah, looks like. Try not to for the next few minutes, until I can get a stimpak into you. Do that for me, Charon, okay? Don’t die. Stay with me.”  
  
She pushed him forward, away from the wall. She wiped her hands on her pants, leaving deep streaks of red, and pulled something from her pocket. There was a hiss as she pressed a med-X syringe against his shoulder, and a moment of blessed, blessed relief before she wrenched the shrapnel from his back and he howled.  
  
“I know, I know,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “I know, love, it’s okay. I need you to lie down now and I’ll give you some more med-X.”  
  
She helped him turn, lying on his side, and pressed another med-X into the vein at the crook of his elbow. Then she slipped a strip of leather into his mouth.  
  
“Between your teeth,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve done this before. Make sure you breathe, okay? I’m going to rinse the knife in rad water and hope it does something to help kill the germs. I’d boil it but we don’t have the time.”  
  
She unbuckled his armour, fingers slipping in the blood, and he heard it clang to the ground, metal and leather. He didn’t feel it as she cut through the cloth of his shirt, but he felt it as she slipped a piece of wire in through the bullet hole until it hit metal. He wanted to vomit.  
  
“Okay,” she said, and he heard the catch in her breath as she paused, just before the knife went in.  
  
She was murmuring something but he couldn’t hear her. There was only the pain, blocking out his sight, clouding his mind. He prayed for unconsciousness and it did not come. The cutting stopped, replaced with a strange sensation, both stinging and warm, as she washed the wound out with what could only be rad water. Then he felt her hands again, warm against his skin, and she put her fingers into his flesh and he screamed against the leather.  
  
His mind retreated, not into unconsciousness but to somewhere like it, where time meant nothing. He drifted in a cloud of pain until the stimpaks took effect, and his mind cleared as his flesh started knitting back together.  
  
Gingerly, he pushed himself upright. His head swam, and he felt her hand on his shoulder, steadying him.  
  
“Here. Water.”  
  
He took it, drank, and crumpled the carton in his fist. Dirty water. The radiation warmed him, gave him a tiny bit of strength back, but did little to help fight the dizziness.  
  
“You didn’t die,” she said with a smile. Her hands were smeared with blood. At some point she had wiped her face and left a trail of dark red across her forehead.  
  
“No,” he said.  
  
“Sorry for yelling,” she said, her eyes sad. “And the orders. I didn’t know how else to get you to move. I thought, if I command him, then he _has_ to move. Or I hoped, at least. Thank god it worked. But it must have been painful.”  
  
“You saved my life.”  
  
“Well, now we’re even.”  
  
He reached out to her, and she slipped under his arm to press herself against his side, her arm around his waist, her head resting against his shoulder.  
  
“I’m kind of married to the idea of you always being around,” she said, “so make sure you don’t go dying on me.”  
  
He was starting to shake, and she hooked her pack with a foot and dragged it over so she could fish out a jar of buffout pills. She dropped one into his palm.  
  
“Just to keep you steady. They’re all dead, we can probably crash here the night, but I don’t have anything to feed you.”  
  
“I am not hungry,” he said. The med-x was still in his system, and he felt insulated from the world, his head full of cotton wool.  
  
“You bled a _lot_ , Charon. I know you’re a big guy, there’s probably a lot of blood in you, but you need to eat. Warmth, too. Stimpaks don’t help much with shock. We need a fire.”  
  
She extricated herself from underneath his arm and stepped away, but he grabbed for her, dragged her back, and she sighed and let him wrap his arms around her waist. She cradled his head against her chest.  
  
“I’ll be right back, okay?” she said, stroking one hand through his hair. “I’m going to see if I can find Dogmeat. He can hunt us down something. If he’s not out there, I’ll come back. You find us somewhere to bunk down. They have beds. Pick one near the wall, somewhere I can build us a fire.”  
  
Reluctantly, he let her go. She ducked out the door with her rifle, and he hauled himself to his feet. There was a twinge in his thigh, and he rooted in her pack for another stimpak that he pressed against his leg. He didn’t know how many she had gone through to drag him back from the brink of death. Too many.  
  
The raiders’ camp was a large one, surrounded by strong walls and barricades. Plenty of sleeping rolls and mattresses were scattered around the shacks and lean-tos. He forced himself to not just pick the nearest one and fall into it; he looked for a spot near the far wall, opposite the door to the camp. He chose one beneath one of the look-out towers, and there he collapsed, sprawled on the mattress, her pack still in one hand.  
  
He coughed up some of the blood still in his lungs, spitting it onto the ground. He was tired, deeply tired, fighting to stay conscious. There was a howl beyond the camp walls and he hoped it was Dogmeat, not a feral mongrel. There were shots, and in alarm he dragged himself back to his feet, casting about for his shotgun. He had left it — where had he left it? By the car? He staggered in the direction of its still-burning wreckage until Sloan rounded the corner and stopped sharp.  
  
“The hell are you doing?”  
  
“My shotgun,” he rasped.  
  
“I have your shotgun in my pack. Rifle too.” She came to his side, taking his hand and settling it on her shoulder so he could use her to steady himself as they walked back across the camp. “Why did you get up?”  
  
“I heard shots.”  
  
“That was me.” Dogmeat trotted past them, a cut of meat hanging from his jaws. “We found some mongrels. Cut the leg off one. They taste like shit but you need to eat.”  
  
He collapsed back onto the mattress, and watched her as she gathered some scraps of wood for a fire. She lit it with an old flick lighter, and sat down on the mattress beside him to tend it until it was hot enough to roast the mongrel leg. They watched it cook, and she leant into him a little. Whatever it was — blood loss, fear — that had made him pull her to him before had disappeared, and her nearness was a strange mix of comforting and overwhelming. He did not know whether to push her away or pull her closer.  
  
She dragged the meat from the fire and sliced into it with her knife, dropping chunks onto a plate she’d scavenged from the camp, and they ate together, silent. Dogmeat waited, salivating, until they had had their fill and Sloan held out the bone for him. He closed his white teeth around it, and carried it off to gnaw on it in private.  
  
The sun was starting to set, turning the sky a shade of soft pink. She was still sitting close, their arms touching, her thigh wet with the blood that still stained his own. When he stirred, uncomfortable, she shifted around to face his side and started picking at the straps of the armour across his shoulders.  
  
“We should get this off you. Clean the blood off so it doesn’t eat into the metal.”  
  
Armour was a bastard to get on and off at the best of times, and his limbs felt like lead. He let her work, watching her face, her quick fingers. He liked the way her brows knitted together when she concentrated on something small, like when she picked a lock or hacked a terminal. She had the same look on her face now, dealing with leather buckles slimy with congealed blood.  
  
“You risked your life for me,” he croaked. “You should not have done that.”  
  
“You’re my friend. I save my friends. When I can.” She pulled the spaulder from his shoulder, and moved to his other side.  
  
“I’ve lived too long already, smoothskin,” he said. “Next time, let me die.”  
  
Her hands stilled, just for a moment.  
  
“No,” she said.  
  
“But you could have been hurt. You could have died.”  
  
 “And _you_ almost _did_ die. I’m not okay with that.”  
  
“This isn’t how it’s meant to work, smoothskin. You don’t risk your life for me.”  
  
“You’re not the boss of me,” she said, and gave him a small smile.  
  
She set the armour down, and Charon shifted his shoulders, glad to be free of it.  
  
“Good thing they didn’t hit the femoral artery, huh?” she said, sitting back down beside him. “Whatever they _did_ hit was pumping out more than enough blood. I just don’t know what I would have done if you’d died on me. Built a massive pyre, I guess. Given you a viking funeral. Don’t know how I would have gotten you up onto it, though.” She sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand.  
  
“Left me to rot,” he suggested.  
  
“No.”  
  
He shrugged. “May as well. No one will mourn me, smoothskin.”  
  
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, her eyebrows pulled together.  
  
“You bastard. _I_ would mourn you. I would — of course I wouldn’t fucking leave you to _rot_ , Charon. You’re not a some raider, or a feral or something! You’re important!”  
  
He was not important, but it mattered to him that she thought he was.  
  
“No one _else_ ,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean you, smoothskin. I know you will mourn for me.” He snorted. “You _shouldn’t._ But you will.”  
  
She huffed a little sigh, and pulled her knees up to her chest. They sat together and watched the fire as the sky darkened.  
  
  


 


	36. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloan gets a bit flustered. In her defence, it's been a while.

  
  
He had argued with her when she told him to sleep, more out of habit than anything else. _I do not sleep, I will keep watch._ He knew he was exhausted, that he needed sleep to restore some strength, but he was stubborn, and he resisted until she threatened to force the issue with an order.  
  
She was right, of course. Once he laid his head down on the mattress sleep came almost at once, dreamless but for a voice that called to him through water, using a name he did not recognise.  
  
He woke sometime in the early hours of the morning, the stars scattered white and glittering over a black sky. Sloan was cleaning his armour, including the chestpiece they had left in the crumbling building, and she looked over to give him a tired smile.  
  
“You can go back to sleep,” she said, her voice soft. “There’s a few hours yet till dawn.”  
  
“I have slept enough,” he said, struggling to push himself upright, and she left the armour to kneel beside him and push him gently back onto the mattress.  
  
“Charon, you’re exhausted. Please. I’ll wake you if I need you.”  
  
“I heard a voice,” he said, letting himself sink back down onto the mattress. She was still here, still kneeling beside him with her hand on his shoulder.  
  
“What did it say?”  
  
“I cannot remember.”  
  
She stayed where she was, and when he closed his eyes she sang the song she had sung him by the campfire, long ago now. A silly little song, but it was his, and her voice was soft and warm and familiar.  
  
The sun was high in the sky when he woke again. The mistress was nowhere to be seen, but Dogmeat was lying nearby, alert, and his tail wagged as he looked over at him.  
  
“Where is our mistress?” Charon asked him, and to his surprise the dog got up and looked out through door of the camp, and back again.  
  
He pushed himself to his feet, and found his legs were more stable for the night of sleep. He went to the door of the camp and waited there, until he saw a shape in the distance and cursed himself for leaving his guns behind.  
  
But it was her, her hair damp, her pack over one shoulder. She was wearing… was that her vault suit?  
  
“Hey, you. You feeling better?” she asked him as she got within speaking distance.  
  
“You are wearing blue.”  
  
“Oh, this?” She picked at the tight material as they walked back through the camp, stretching it away from her side. “I keep it around for nostalgia’s sake mostly, but it comes in handy sometimes. Absolute pants for being stealthy, of course.” She stirred the fire back to life, tossing on another few sticks before straightening and pulling out her damp clothes to hang nearby. “I was just covered in blood, I had to go wash it out. Cost me six rad-x, but it was worth it.” She sank to the ground to sit cross-legged in front of the fire, and ran her hands through her damp hair, mussing it up. “The river’s pretty close by, if you want to go rinse off. I don’t have a vault suit for you, though. You’ll either have to be damp or bloody.”  
  
Charon picked damp.  
  
It did not escape his notice that Dogmeat followed him out to the river, and he wondered whether the mistress had told the dog to keep an eye on him. He glared at him in suspicion, but Dogmeat just sat on the riverbank and wagged his tail.  
  
He stripped down to wash, rinsing off only the parts of his clothing that were caked in dried blood. That was, unfortunately, most of it. He walked back to camp with his shirt and vest hanging from one hand, his pants clinging to his legs.  
  
“I am damp,” he told her as he returned to camp, “but at least I no longer smell of blood. Much.”  
  
She took his shirt and vest from him, hanging them up next to hers, and gestured for him to sit back by the fire. She’d pulled out a couple of chairs and a table from one of the shacks, and Charon took a seat in one next to the campfire, steam rising from his trousers.  
  
“You wish to stay here another night,” he said. It was not a question. She appeared to be in no hurry to move on.  
  
“May as well,” she said. “You seem like you’re mostly back to normal, but I could do with a day off.” She draped herself into the chair opposite, her head lolling back. “Last night scared the crap out of me, and I’m kind of tired.”  
  
Charon winced inwardly. He’d forgotten she had not slept.  
  
“I will find us some food,” he said. “You stay, rest.”  
  
She waved a hand, looking at him through slitted eyes, like a cat. “No rush. Don't go running off, I’m enjoying the view.”  
  
“View?” He looked behind himself, but saw only the empty camp.  
  
“You! You haven’t got a shirt on.”  
  
“I — what?” He looked back at her, forehead furrowing in confusion.  
  
She gestured to him. “You. Are not wearing. A shirt. And I,” she pointed to herself, “am enjoying. The view. Viz., the large expanse of uncovered _youness_ that you have seen fit to grant me on this fine afternoon.”  
  
“Are you high, smoothskin?”  
  
She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, my god. I’m sorry. You’re impressive to look at, Charon, that’s all. I shouldn’t be paying you compliments like that; just tell me to shut up if I start making you uncomfortable.”  
  
He stared at her until it sunk in that the faint pink in her cheeks and the way she was sneaking looks at him out of the corner of her eye really was because she liked what she saw. He swallowed, and looked away.  
  
“Right,” she said. “That’s over the line. Okay.” She stood up, and went to poke around the other shacks.  
  
“I… I have offended.” Charon stood up, and she waved her hands in alarm.  
  
“No! No no no, no, I said the wrong thing. I crossed the line. You should sit back down, I’m just finding us some more mattresses that aren’t all caked in blood.”  
  
He frowned as he watched her duck into a shack and drag a mattress out behind her.  
  
“Here, give me that. You’re too small.”  
  
“I can do it,” she said with a stubborn set to her jaw. “You can sit, relax.”  
  
“I do not _relax_ ,” he told her, and took the thin mattress from her. He replaced the old one, and carried the bloodied mattress over to toss it in the corner of the camp.  
  
“I could’ve done it,” she said, looking a little chastised.  
  
Charon shrugged. “I am bigger than you.”  
  
“I know,” she said, her eyes resting on him for a moment before sliding away. She seemed a bit flustered. Hot.  
  
He peered at her. “Are you… well?”  
  
“Oh, lord.” She covered her face with her hands. “It’s nothing! It’s nothing. We can’t have this conversation.” She peeked out between her fingers. “If you ask me about it I’ll make you uncomfortable. I don’t want to do that, so I’d prefer it if you didn’t pursue this line of questioning.”  
  
Ah. The shirtless thing again. That was… interesting. He was actually having an _effect_ on her. He smiled, watching her as she went poking around in another shack, looking for a second mattress. The way she moved, the faint colour in her cheeks, the way her vault-suit clung to her… the idea that she might seriously _want_ him… it was tantalising. Intriguing.  
  
“Always so careful not to give an order,” he murmured as she started dragging another mattress out. He wondered if the way she was bending over was calculated on her part. “If you do not want me to do something, you should tell me. Then I won’t do it.”  
  
“There’s a difference between _making_ you stop something and _asking_ you to stop.” She shot him a look over her shoulder. “I’m not going to _make_ you stop doing something unless I really have to, and as I understand the contract, that won’t be a problem.”  
  
He huffed a bitter laugh. “There is plenty I could do to you, smoothskin, that the contract would not stop.”  
  
She went _bright_ red, and Charon could not help but smirk to himself. That reaction was supremely satisfying, in a way he had not expected. This was… this was a _power_ , a new and strange one, and it was _thrilling_. He could do things, say things, that affected her. And she would not say no. She could; if she wanted to, if she _needed_ to, she would always be able to stop him, and that knowledge was something he cherished because this… this was a freedom. It was _better_ than a freedom. It was _control._  
  
“Listen,” she said. She turned to face him, then looked away, out over the settlement wall. “You didn’t know what you wanted, and I said — well, I said to let me know when you worked it out.” She brushed her hair out of her face. “But maybe you don’t know yet, and you still… I mean, what I’m saying is, you don’t _have_ to know.” She looked up at him, her eyebrows pinched together. “Sometimes we never know. That’s okay. Just… just be aware that _I’m_ not going to make that first step. Or the second, or the third. I have all the power here, and the only way I’ll know that you _want_ this is if you make all the moves.” She swallowed. “And I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable before.” She rubbed her forehead with two fingers, and sighed. “Christ. Two hundred years ago this would be a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen.”  
  
He stepped close to her, very close. He was tall enough that he towered over her, blocking out the sun, and she looked up at him with something that could almost be fear. That was more enticing than it should be.  
  
“Your lizard-brain is afraid of me,” he said, and lifted a hand to rub a lock of her damp hair between his fingers. Her breathing had changed, her chest rising in a way that he tried very hard to ignore. He did not want to lose this new, small power by allowing her to overwhelm him. He wanted to keep this control, just for a moment.  
  
“You are very big,” she said. “And — and something you should know is that the brain is very good at misinterpreting things like fear. All it knows,” she took a deep breath, “is that the pupils are dilated, and the breathing has changed, and that adrenaline is running through its system. The brain just knows _arousal_.”  
  
He couldn’t stop the growl in the back of his throat, and there was a corresponding flash in her eyes.  
  
“You have given me power,” he said, sliding his hand down to press his palm to the side of her throat, “and I like it _too much_.”  
  
“Power? How?”  
  
“I can say things, I can _touch_ ,” he grazed the pad of his thumb across her Adam’s apple, “and you _change_.” Her lips parted, just a little, and she closed her eyes. “You are… responsive.”  
  
“Am I your science project now?” she teased him a little breathlessly, her voice box vibrating against his hand. “You push my buttons and see what I do?”  
  
“Would you like that?”  
  
He felt her sharp intake of breath, and marvelled at it. That he could evoke that response.  
  
He was consumed by the sight of his ruined flesh against her smooth white skin. It was a tragic thing, made her seem more beautiful in contrast, more delicate, more _alive_. He could feel the pulse of her blood under his hand, and with a jolt he remembered too well, too vividly, the sight of that blood leaking out through his fingers.  
  
She opened her eyes. “Charon? Are you okay?”  
  
He nodded absently, lifting his hand from her neck to trace his finger along the skin where a deathclaw’s talon had torn her apart. There was no scar, no line; the stimpaks had done their work well. It was easy to forget how close she had come to death.  
  
“Charon?”  
  
What to say? ‘I remembered the time you almost died’? _He_ had almost died, barely twenty-four hours ago. The pools of his blood were still sticky.  
  
Had she felt what he felt? Not the screaming of the contract, of course, but the fear, the dread… she had been so focused, so collected; tending his wounds, moving him from danger. Had she been frightened when he closed his eyes?  
  
“You had your hands inside my chest,” he said to her, and hesitated just a moment before he raised both hands to thread his fingers through her hair.  
  
She closed her eyes again, a peace settling over her face. “Yes. I know I hurt you. I’m sorry. I didn’t have enough med-X.”  
  
“Pain is temporary.”  
  
“You _screamed_.” Her face contorted, and he bent to press his lips against her forehead. “And — and you told me to let you die.”  
  
He dropped a hand, and let the other slide down her face to cup her cheek. He sighed, and rubbed his thumb up and down her scar.  
  
“I was putting you in danger. And I…” he hesitated. “I don’t want to outlive you, smoothskin.”  
  
She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at him with her eyes that were too large and bright. “Would you have let _me_ die? If there was no contract, if I had asked you to let me go…”  
  
So many of these sorts of questions were impossible for him to answer, but this one was not.  
  
“No,” he said.  
  
“But you ask that of me.”  
  
“Because I am not worth saving. I am an extension of my employer’s will, and nothing more. With you that is someone I am proud to be, but with anyone else…” He rubbed his thumb along her scar again, and swallowed. “I have done many things I wish I hadn’t. The world will be a better place when I’m gone. And when you die… it will be too hard. I don’t want to belong to anyone else.”  
  
She closed her eyes at that, just for a moment, tight against tears. She lifted her arm to curl her hand around his wrist, her fingers against his pulse.  
  
“You are worth saving, Charon. You just… you’re a _person_. You’re not a tool, you’re not a weapon. You’re a _person_ and it’s not your fault that two hundred years worth of assholes didn’t see that. I don’t care how long you’ve lived, or how tired you are, or what other people made you do. I don’t give you permission to die.”  
  
“Cruel smoothskin,” he murmured, and bent to press a kiss against her cheek. Then she tilted her face up, and he didn’t stop to think. He pressed his mouth against hers, his hand moving behind her head, twisting into her hair. Her lips were gentle, softer than anything he could remember, and _responsive_ , yes, that was the best part. Her mouth opened to him, hot and sweet, and his mind screeched to a halt.  
  
He was kissing his mistress he was _kissing_ his _mistress_ what the _fuck_ was he _doing_ fuckfuckfuck —  
  
He pulled away, ready to stutter out an apology, but she was grinning at him, a flush in her cheeks, one tooth biting down on her bottom lip in a way that almost made him groan.  
  
“ _That_ ,” she said, “was very agreeable.”  
  
He hesitated. “Then you would… not be opposed to doing it again?”  
  
“I would not.” She tilted her head to one side, and a trace of sadness crept back into her expression. “And you? Worth staying alive for?”  
  
The corner of his mouth quirked into a smile, and he reached out to rub his thumb along the line of her jaw. “You mistake me,” he said. “I will be here as long as you will have me. I am not worth risking your own life for, and I don’t want to outlive you, but mistress, I am in no hurry to die.”  
  
She let out a breath, and took his hand in hers. “Good,” she said. “Nor am I.”  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAN it was hard responding to some of your comments on the last chapter without being all "DON'T WORRY THERE'S KISSING SOON"
> 
> I think, for someone like Charon, the lack of agency he has in everyday life means that any sort of power becomes this massive aphrodisiac. And he has it so rarely that the responsibilities that come along with any power are basically unknown to him. He has no way to pull himself back. So any power has the tendency to run away with him, and he can find that pretty frightening once he actually stops and thinks about it. Totally hot though.
> 
> OK SO *clears throat* I might edit this out later, but you guys are amazing and ilu so I wanted to link you to my website where I put all my original work, but apparently AO3 frowns on that and there's no DM system? so uhhhh just check me out on twitter @prosateuse, there's a link there. I just thought some of you might be interested. Let it be known however that TCTB is my baby and my masterpiece and nothing else I've done is anywhere near as good so don't raise your expectations too high, lmao.   
> If you like my original work there's a link to my patreon in the sidebar, and my tumblr and all that.


	37. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another step

  
Charon experimented.  
  
She had always been somewhat removed with him, physically. Even contact that was not skin-on-skin was fairly rare, compared with his observations of her around the other people she knew. With MacCready she was warm, always slinging an arm around his shoulder or his waist, and of course Hancock she touched all the time. Even the synth. With Charon she was much more sparing, deliberate, and he knew without asking her that this was intentional. That sort of constant touching had always been repellent to him. This was one of the things she _knew_ , one of the things she had either guessed or silently observed. And he rarely touched _her_ , because she was the employer. There was still a boundary line in his head, trained into him over centuries — because what employer would want _him_ to touch them? Only two or three, and those had been orders he had not enjoyed following.   
  
Casual touch was an alien thing to him, uncomfortable, but he had kissed her and she had _enjoyed_ it. That was new, and intriguing. It was _allowed_. And he _wanted_ to touch her, to be close to her, even when it felt strange to him.  
  
So he experimented. He put a hand on her shoulder, briefly, as he passed. He allowed their hands to touch as he took something from her. He brushed against her, accidentally-on-purpose. None of this drew a rebuke, or even any more acknowledgement than the ghost of a smile, or warmth in her eyes.   
  
“I’m starving,” she said late in the afternoon. She had gone through every lean-to and trunk in the place and found nothing worth eating. “You know these assholes didn’t have a single packet of dandy boy apples or anything? They must have been living on jet and nuka cola.”   
  
_She_ had been living on jet and nuka cola. After a night without sleep and the stress of the fight the day before, even a hit of jet wasn’t doing much to help keep her awake. She swayed slightly as she sat by the fire, and Charon was not pleased with the idea of her going out to hunt or scavenge for food.  
  
“What do you want?” he asked her. “I will find it for you. Or kill it for you.”  
  
She shook her head, and smothered a yawn.   
  
“I’m not hungry.”  
  
“You _just said_ you were starving.”  
  
“Did I?” She blinked blearily at the fire. “You wouldn’t know it now, but I used to be great at all-nighters. Sniping, law school. It was a bit harder when Shaun came along, for some reason. I don’t know why. Maybe just age. You can get away with shit at twenty-three that you can’t at thirty, I guess. He was two months old when he started sleeping through the night. At least we had Codsworth to help out.”  
  
“What do you want to eat?” Charon asked her again.  
  
“I don’t know. Whatever you can find, I guess.”  
  
Charon picked up his rifle, but when Dogmeat followed him to the gate he turned and growled at the dog.  
  
“You have to watch the mistress,” he said. “She’s tired.”  
  
The dog whined, and he scowled at it.  
  
 _“Stay.”_   
  
His hunt was not fruitful. Everything living seemed determined to avoid him. At last he stumbled across some wild mutfruit, and filled his pockets with them. They were unripe, but when he handed them to her she ate them with relish, juice running down her fingers.   
  
It was still strange to see her in that blue vaultsuit. She did not look like herself. Like it was a costume she was wearing. It nipped in at her waist in the same way as the red dress, and he very much wanted to run his hand along the curve of her side. That experiment was something he had not yet worked up the nerve for.   
  
Instead he sat down beside her on the mattress, and stole one of her mutfruits.   
  
“Thank you for not letting me die,” he said eventually.   
  
She looked up at him.  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
She tossed the core of her fruit into the embers and sighed, leaning her head, just briefly, against his shoulder. As if she _knew_ about the experiment, and wanted to join in.   
  
“I need to touch base somewhere,” she said. “I’m all jittery, after those ferals and then yesterday. I need to ground myself.”  
  
“Goodneighbor?”  
  
Her face relaxed into a smile. “Yeah, if you don’t mind. After that, I have to go give Nick that last tape we got from Nahant, and then he and I have to do something.”  
  
“What will we be doing?” Charon prodded at the fire with a stick, and then tossed it onto the embers.   
  
“…No, not we. Him and me. It’s… it’s something Nick has to do, and it’s personal. I wouldn’t feel right bringing you along.” She worried at her bottom lip. “That won’t be awful for you, will it?”  
  
He smiled at her. She always thought of him.  
  
“If I am not aware you are in danger, there is little conflict. I will be fine.”  
  
She relaxed a little. “I hate doing this, but I really… I mean, this is important to Nick. I have to be there.”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
He did understand. There was always going to be a time when she would leave him behind, and it was true that if he did not know she was in trouble there would be less contract-driven anxiety. It still _bothered_ him, and he tried to hide it. It was his _job_ to protect her, and he couldn’t do that from behind Goodneighbor’s walls, or wherever it was she was planning on leaving him. But she was good to him, she had thought of him, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty.  
  
It would take a day and a half to reach Goodneighbor, and as soon as they did she would attach herself to Hancock again. Which was fair. He did not begrudge her that. He was her… her _whatever,_ and it had been a while since Sloan had last seen him. But it meant Charon had to get his fill of whatever this was, this experimentation, before they got there.   
  
He sat beside her that night, on the mattress by the fire, and haltingly put his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t even look up. She leant against him, her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes.  
  
Charon stiffened. He had expected surprise, maybe tolerance. This was out of character for him, and she knew that. He had done this sort of thing before, to comfort her when she was sad or afraid, but never casually. She was leaning against him as if he was anybody, as if this was a perfectly normal thing for him to do.   
  
“You’re good to me,” she murmured.   
  
“I’m not,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I do as I am commanded. I am not good to you.” He looked up at the stars, and after a moment he sighed, and said, “But I would like to be.”  
  
She looked up at him with a tired smile, and he met her eyes.   
  
“Are you going to kiss me again?” she asked him.  
  
His mouth went dry.  
  
“If… you would like me to,” he hazarded.   
  
“See, you can’t say that,” she said with a cheeky grin. “I’ll think you don’t want to and you’re just trying to make me happy.” She lifted her hand to take his, resting on her shoulder, and wound their fingers together. “I _would_ like you to. But I’m not _telling_ you to.”  
  
He bent his head to hers, and hesitated. She was so _close_ and her eyes were so _beautiful_ , green with blooms of chestnut and flecks of gold and amber, and then she closed them and leant forward to catch his lips with hers.  
  
She let go of his hand, and raised her fingers to his face, tracing along the lines of his scarred skin. Her fingers were fire-tipped, almost burning. It was so alien, to be touched this way; she was touching his _face_ , she was _touching_ him and she wasn’t horrified. He closed his eyes, and slipped his hand behind her head, pressing his mouth more fiercely against hers.   
  
She made a sound, a soft moan that went straight to his crotch, and opened her mouth to him. She tasted of nuka cola and sour mutfruit, and her arms were around his neck and he didn’t want this to stop. He wanted to _have_ her, forever.   
  
Their teeth knocked together and she hummed a quiet laugh, and she pulled back, pressing her forehead against his.   
  
“You don’t have to do this,” he croaked, slipping his hand down the curve of her back. “You don’t have to touch me.”  
  
She dropped a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. “I like touching you,” she said breathlessly.  
  
“I do not understand you. Kissing ghouls.”  
  
She chuckled. “Maybe I’m just a perv. Or maybe I _like_ you.”  
  
“Don’t tease me.”  
  
“I’m not teasing you, killer.” She sank back down onto the mattress, detaching her arms from around his neck, her hands lingering on his shoulders, just for a moment. “I wouldn’t do that. Not about something like this.”  
  
She wouldn’t. He knew that. And she had looked at him that afternoon like she’d _wanted_ him. She let him kiss her and she kissed him _back_ , and this was all far too new, too difficult to parse. She had to know that this wasn’t required of her. She had to know that he didn’t expect her to want him back, that even if she enjoyed looking at him, she didn’t have to touch him.  
  
“You are human,” he told her, lifting a hand to trace his finger down the length of her scar. “You are _stunning_. You can do better.”  
  
 She held one hand out to her side, and let it drop. “I don’t care about _better_ , whatever that is. I mean, is there a ranking system? What are the criteria? Who decides this shit?”  
  
“Smoothskin…” He sighed. “You do not have to do this. I won’t be offended if you tell me to stop.”  
  
She scrunched up her nose. “Oh, I can do better, you say? Well in _that_ case…” She rolled her eyes, and smiled at him. “Come on. You’d be upset if I actually agreed with you.”  
  
“No. I would not blame you.”  
  
She gave him a long, serious look.  
  
“Listen,” she said. “How many people have you seen me kiss?”  
  
“…One.” And it was true. For all that Hancock spoke about her being free to spread her wings she had never actually done so.  
  
“Exactly,” she said. “I may be in an open relationship, but that doesn’t mean I go around kissing just anyone. I pick you, all right?”  
  
“You _pick_ me?” His heart clenched. “You… you have terrible taste.”  
  
She laughed, turning back towards the fire and leaning against his side. Her smile turned sad, and she sighed. “I just… You know what bothers me the most about your whole contract thing? Well, not the most, that’s not true. Other things bother me more. But I hate that it’s twisted you up so bad you can’t see the sort of person you are. You don’t see yourself. You don’t have the _opportunity_ to see yourself, to even _be_ yourself, like, you don’t know what you would do if it wasn’t there. You think it’s responsible for all of you, and I understand why, but it’s not. It's not.”  
  
She looked up at him, fleetingly, and reached out to rub the back of her hand against his thigh. He caught her hand, and squeezed it gently.  
  
“I see you, and I like you,” she said. “You’ve been dealt a shitty hand and the way you deal with it, I just… you are _so_ strong, Charon. It blows my mind. And you’re thoughtful and you’re funny in this really dry sarcastic way, and you’re _serious_ , too, I love how serious you are. And you give a shit when good people die. You still have _morals_.” She glanced up at him again, and her eyes were wet. “You have _morals_ , like, how is that even _possible_ , after everything? The things people made you do? You are _so remarkable_ and you don’t see it.”   
  
He held her gaze for a moment, stunned, until she took a deep breath, and looked into the fire.   
  
“Edward told me he knew about you because of your contract. He’d heard of it, and you mentioned it, that’s how he knew who you were. He said it’s unique, as far as he knows, and he knows a lot. But you can’t have been the only one, right? You can’t have been. There must have been others, once. Others that didn’t last long enough for the ghoul grapevine to know their names. But you did. And all of this, your survival, your personality, your soul — that’s in _spite_ of the contact, not because of it. And _you don’t see it_. Because it twisted you up and it yells in your brain, and you’ve never had the chance to learn who you are. I wish you were free, so that you could see yourself.”  
  
He stared at her. He knew he should be saying something, that he should respond to that but he didn’t know how. She had painted this picture of him in her mind that he could never live up to and yet he _cherished_ her for it. She _saw_ him, he was a _person_ to her. Someone she _valued_. He had no words, no way of expressing how that affected him, but perhaps he didn’t need them. Perhaps she knew.  
  
He snaked his arm around her shoulders again, and held her close.  
  
“You are a good person,” he said eventually. “A good employer. Kind. I don’t deserve —”  
  
“You don’t hear me,” she said, cutting him off. “Sometimes, you just… Like I’ll thank you for something, and you blow it off. I mean, I know protecting me is part of the deal. But you didn’t have to go out and find me food this afternoon. You don’t have to do half the stuff you do for me. I notice those things. I appreciate them. And I never know what to do to thank you. You deserve a _lot_ , Charon. Good things. I owe you so much.”  
  
“You can’t say that to me.” He ground his teeth, staring down into the embers of the fire. “You have no idea what you have given me. You have _no idea_. I was not living before you. I was existing. Surviving. Not living.” He shook his head. “You have no idea.”   
  
He slid his arm down to her waist, and tightened his grip. She was too fucking _perfect,_ this woman. Brave and stunning and kind beyond reason. Enchanting. Bewitching. His fairy-tale beauty from another time.   
  
“I know I don’t," she was saying. She slid her arm around his waist, her fingers twisting in his shirt. “There’s so much I don’t understand, and — and I can’t understand. I can’t know what it’s like to live with what you’ve lived with. I can’t know what it’s like to be so fully under other people’s control. I know I can’t understand. But I try. I care about you. I have done for a long time.” She squeezed him a little tighter. “You belong to me. I want you to be happy.”  
  
He took a sharp breath in. “I do not know what that is. Happy.” He looked into the fire, listening to it crackle. “I am still not sure what I want, beauty.”   
  
She pulled back, looking up at him with an expression somewhere between astonishment and delight.  
  
“…What?”  
  
“You called me beauty.”  
  
He hadn’t realised he’d done so, and nearly panicked. His mouth went dry and he looked away, swallowing, grasping for something to say.  
  
“Sleeping Beauty,” he said at last.  
  
“Oh!” She chuckled to herself. “The vault? Sleeping Beauty only slept a hundred years. I have her beat by more than double.”   
  
“Twice as beautiful, then,” he said, and looked back at her to see the colour rise in her cheeks. It was madness to him that she blushed at such compliments, as if she’d never looked in a mirror before.   
  
“That’s a good line,” she said, looking out into the night.  
  
“But that is… permitted? To call you that?” He summoned his courage, and bent to graze his lips against her hair.  
  
“Of course it is, Charon,” she said. “You don’t have to ask. You can call me whatever you like. If anything ever bothers me, I’ll let you know.”   
  
Beauty, then. It was a good name for her. That thought was familiar, and he tried to remember when it was he’d first had it. After she took him to the vault? No, long after that… It had been early, quiet. The Slog, one morning just before dawn. Yes.  
  
She started toying with the laces of her boots, a peaceful, pensive expression on her face.   
  
“I think maybe you _do_ know what you want,” she said at last. “But you won’t allow yourself to want it. It’s too hard.”  
  
“It — it is hard,” he said. “I do not care about people, not… like this. I do not become _attached_. I have no precedence for this and _you are my employer._ ”  
  
She looked up at him, studying his face. “I’m tired, big guy,” she said. “So maybe I’m missing your point here. You’re going to have to walk me through this. Are you turning me down, or are you saying you need more time, or…?”  
  
“No. I’m saying I need help here, smoothskin. I don’t know what I’m doing.”  
  
She gave him a lop-sided smile. “I can’t take the lead for you on this one. You have to have the power here. It balances out some of the power I have everywhere else. That helps the employer thing, right?”   
  
He shook his head, pulling away from her so he could turn and slip his fingers through her hair. She leant into the gesture, and his chest tightened.   
  
“No. There are… The employer is to be feared, the employer is to be obeyed. You are _everything,_ you understand? In my head, you are _everything_. Even the ones I hated, they were everything.”  
  
“I don’t know what I can do about that,” she murmured.  
  
“Nothing. There is nothing you can do.”  
  
“I could kiss you again.” She gave him a wry smile. “Maybe there’ll be a point where we tip the balance. Maybe there’ll be a point where I’m not just your employer any more.”  
  
He took a shaky breath, and drew his hand from her hair to cup her cheek.  
  
“You have not been _just_ my employer in a long time.”  
  
Her smile was a benediction, like the sun rising. He kissed her again. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kissing! And sad ghoul boy! And emotion! And more kissing! Yay!


	38. Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon ain't ready to think the L word just yet.

  
  
Guarding her while she slept that night was a different experience. For one thing, he thought of it, very specifically, as ‘guarding her’. Not ‘keeping watch’, not ‘standing sentry’. It had always been his responsibility to protect her, but this… this was different.   
  
She had gained a new preciousness to him, new value. And he was very aware of what she had done for him, the day before. Not only had she saved his life, but she had watched over him while he slept. Watched _him_. Protected him, guarded him. That had not happened before, not in all his long experience. She had watched over him and he had trusted her to do so. Now, in the peace of the small hours, it seemed an incredible thing.  
  
And she had let him call her _beauty_.   
  
He was at once both thrilled and deeply afraid. It was hard enough to care for her, to be her friend, and now? He didn’t know what this was. He was willing, more than willing, to pour as much affection onto her as he possibly could, to follow his instincts and trust that she would help him along the way. But if it went _wrong_ , if it ended somehow…  
  
He kept himself distant from employers. That was how it had always been. He had built his walls around himself and they had stayed on the far side, and he had been able, to a point, to protect himself from them, to keep his mind largely intact. The walls weren’t even _there_ any more, he had dismantled them without realising it and so much of himself was tied up in her that he didn’t know what he would do if she wasn’t there.   
  
He didn’t intend to outlive her. He hadn’t for a while now; though he hadn’t known it consciously, not at first. It would be too hard, to have to go back to the way things had been before. To build those walls back up again. All her plans of setting him up with Valentine or Hancock had always seemed unrealistic to him. What would be the chances they would get to the contract before he did? And physically handing the contract, _her_ contract, to someone else, some stranger… He had tried to imagine it once or twice and it had been too painful.   
  
On the other hand, without him, who would protect her? The idea of her safety being in the hands of another person was not an appealing one either.   
  
And if it ended… If this new, half-formed entanglement between them became too complicated, if he angered her somehow, if she had her fill of his affections and put a stop to it… It would be painful. Difficult, in a way he had not had to deal with before.   
  
He watched her twitching in her sleep, and felt a soft throb in his chest. She was too perfect.   
  
It was worth the risk, this… whatever this was, and it was even worth what would come after. But that did little to lessen his fear. He didn’t want to leave her, and he didn’t want _her_ to leave _him_. There was no solution to this problem.   
  
At last he sighed, and picked up his gun.  
  
“Watch the mistress,” he said to Dogmeat, and rose to make a circuit of the camp.   
  
He stopped in each lookout post around the walls of the camp, and surveyed the horizon. Here and there there were the very distant glows of someone’s fire, raiders or settlers or scavengers. Far enough away that they were unlikely to be a threat.   
  
The building in which he had lain bleeding loomed in the darkness, and he hesitated. He didn’t want to go in there, to see the place where he had almost died. But the building had more than one ingress, and he didn’t want to discover too late that someone was hiding in there, watching.  
  
Charon chewed the inside of his cheek, and stepped through the door.   
  
It was too dilapidated to know for sure what it had been, back before the war. It could have been a home or a store, an office, perhaps. The walls were thick, and Sloan had set him down well inside, hidden from the doorway. He couldn’t see the blood from here, but he could see the shine of moonlight on the spent stimpaks lying on the floor.   
  
He had been trying to avoid remembering the impossibly long minutes he’d spent bleeding out. Much of it was foggy, and the bits that kept returning disturbed him. They brought with them thoughts he didn’t want and barely recognised, cruel thoughts, that she should have let him die, that it could have all been over. In the moment his only wish had been for peace, for a final rest, but now those thoughts were tinged with bitterness and guilt. If she had let him go, he wouldn’t have said the things he’d said to her. He wouldn’t have kissed her like that, wouldn’t have dragged her further into the impossible clusterfuck of his life. Something in his head told him he should be ashamed of himself and he didn’t want to listen to that part of himself. He refused to regret it. Refused.   
  
He gripped his shotgun tighter as he moved through inside, more for reassurance than anything else. He rounded the crumbling remnants of a wall and saw the blood, black in the darkness. It was thick, sticky against the back wall where he had sat half-conscious, waiting for her to return. It had pooled on the floor, and Sloan had smeared it when she had tried to move him to dig the bullet out of his chest.   
  
He stared down at the bloodstains, his stomach churning, until the worst of his horror eased away. Then he turned, and sat, leaning up against the opposite wall. Sat and looked at the ghost of himself, picked out in blood on the wall across the room.   
  
He could almost feel the pain in his side, could almost hear Sloan’s voice as she whispered reassurances. He closed his eyes, and let the moment wash over him.  
  
Had she… had she called him _love?_   
  
He replayed it in his mind; heard the tremor in her voice, the echoes of his own cry of pain. She _had_ called him love. What did that mean? Was that… was that just something she called people, when they were in pain? Something said to sooth him?  
  
It _had_ soothed him, somehow. Like the echoes of some buried memory. Comfort.  
  
Some stupid part of him wanted to go and wake her up, to ask her what it meant while he had the mad courage to do so. But maybe it was better to wonder. He wasn’t sure he knew how to handle any answer she might give him. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she’d said it automatically, hadn’t realised she’d said it. He didn’t want to give her the chance to take it back. He’d rather keep it, that whispered solace in the mist of pain.   
  
The rest of the building was empty, long since stripped of anything useful by the raiders or whoever had come before them. There were few places for anyone to hide, and at length Charon was satisfied, and slipped back through the night to the campfire.  
  
Dogmeat wagged his tail as he returned, and laid his chin down on his paws.  
  
“Good dog,” Charon said.  
  
He settled back into one of the chairs by the table, his shotgun across his knees, and let his gaze settle on the mistress. She was twitching in her sleep, her fingers grasping for something unseen, her eyes moving rapidly behind her eyelids. She would be tired, when she woke in the morning. One night without sleep and another too filled with dreams… She needed a proper rest, in the relative safety of a settlement. Goodneighbor would be a relief, even if it meant he had to hand her over to someone else, and then watch as she left him behind.  
  
She really was twitching more than usual. Charon hesitated, then rose from the chair to crouch beside her and shake her awake.  
  
“Smoothskin.”  
  
She jolted upright, gulping in a lungful of air. Her hand found his arm, her fingers pressing into his skin.  
  
“You all right?”  
  
“I’m — yes. Just a dream.”  
  
“Just a dream?”   
  
She looked up at him, and took his meaning. She hesitated, and took her hand away.  
  
It was just… lots of blood. Lots of blood I couldn’t stop.”  
  
“Your blood?”  
  
She shook her head, her hair falling in front of her face. Realisation dawned.  
  
“… _My_ blood.”  
  
“Your blood.”  
  
He sat on the mattress beside her, and stared at the ground. She’d kicked dirt over the worst of it, but there were still drops of blood here and there, the pools of it in the ruined building and more over by the wreck of the car. Not, given the number of raider corpses he’d dragged out of eyeshot earlier, that the rest of the place was too much better. But at least that blood wasn’t _his._ That mattered, somehow.  
  
He didn’t want her dreaming of that, of his blood, of the long drawn-out minutes she’d fought for him. She had fought all over again in her dream, and perhaps she had lost. Lots of blood she couldn’t stop.  
  
The bitter thoughts at the back of his mind reared up again, whispering that she should have let him die. That she would have been better off without him and his arrogant claims on her friendship, her affection.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he said.   
  
She snorted. “Not your fault for _bleeding_ , Charon.”  
  
“That’s not… Never mind.” He cleared his throat. “B-beauty?”  
  
Her face softened a little, and she closed her eyes.   
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“Is there something… What I can do?”  
  
“You can sit with me, for a while.”  
  
“Like you did with me.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The fire was low, short flames lapping over the embers, and he stirred them with a stick, sending sparks up towards the sky. He tossed the stick into the fire, and looked over at her, her face picked out in firelight and shifting shadows.  
  
“Do you often have nightmares?” he asked her.  
  
“Sometimes. About the vault, or the deathclaw. Other things too.”  
  
“I do not notice,” he admitted.   
  
“You noticed tonight.”  
  
“Tonight…” he swallowed. “Tonight I was paying more attention to _you_ than to watching for danger. Foolish.” He caught her eye, and hesitated. “You were twitching more. More than usual.”  
  
“Hmm.” She lifted a hand to rub one finger along the bottom of her lip. “If the kissing distracts you from your job, perhaps I ought to stop it.”  
  
“Amusing,” he said dryly.  
  
She grinned at him, and pushed herself up on her knees to kiss his cheek. He slid his hand behind her head before she could pull back, and brushed his scarred lips briefly against hers. God, he could get used to this.  
  
“You joke, mistress,” he said, “but if my work is compromised you must correct me.” He brushed his thumb along her cheekbone. “I will always do my best to serve you. Do not allow me to do any less.”  
  
She took his hand, and he watched her as she ran her fingertips along his torn skin, his bare tendons. To him his hands were far too much like those of a corpse; rotted, monstrous. She had never looked at them like that. Never had she been afraid to touch them, or even raise them to her lips. Never. Not since the first day.  
  
There was no horror in her face as she examined him, just a solemn pensiveness.  
  
“I suppose we should talk about that,” she said eventually. “Where we should draw the lines, between relationship and… and service.”  
  
“Lines?”  
  
“I mean…” She struggled with it, and sighed. “We’re not on equal footing. I don’t want you always thinking about your… _contractual obligations,_ or whatever. Not when we’re being all…” She searched for a word, and gave up. “You know. Relationshippy. There should be a line. A mistress switch.”  
  
“No lines. You will always be my mistress. That is not something I can turn off.”  
  
“I know, but…”   
  
Her face contorted into a picture of frustration, and Charon understood. He put his hand to her cheek, and turned her face towards him.  
  
“There are not two Sloans in my head,” he said. “Only one. Always mistress, always beauty. You understand?”  
  
Her face softened, and she nodded, reaching over to rest her hand against his neck.  
  
“Do you hate that? That I’m always in charge of you?”  
  
“No. I don’t want to break you into separate parts. Nor do I want anyone else in charge of me.”  
  
She looked as though she had something else to say, but whatever it was, she let it go.  
  
The next morning she woke later than usual, perhaps an hour after dawn. After breakfast they packed up their camp, and headed east.  
  
Charon was glad to be moving, and impatient to get back to Boston as soon as possible. And yet, when they topped a hill and caught sight of those distant skyscrapers, there was a far-away cast to her face that made him regret it. As if a part of her was already in Goodneighbor.  
  
It had been a while since she’d seen Hancock, and longer still since they’d stopped in at the bedraggled little settlement he ran. It was her home, in a way Diamond City never could be. Of course she missed them. But these could be their last hours alone together in a while, and he wished she was thinking of that, not of the place they were headed, the people they would see.  
  
Charon let her lead the way, with the strange feeling of having lost something.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter just a leeettle early because grad school orientation tomorrow <3 
> 
> Charon is my sweet little angst monster and he worries way too much.
> 
> Next chapter needs some work and you will be my patient friends. Esp because the one after that is ESPECIALLY GOOD and VERY LONG.


	39. Pleasing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the conversation keeps turning a certain direction, maybe you have something on your mind.

  
  
They stepped out of Goodneighbor, and the door swung shut behind them.   
  
The break had been good for her. They had stayed only a day and a half, but even so she was relaxed, rested, even cheerful. She walked with her gun slung across her back, her thumbs in her pockets, kicking an ancient can along the road as they went.  
  
“So,” she said, blowing a bubble from her gum and letting it pop, “what’s eating you?”  
  
“Hmm?”   
  
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You’ve been especially scowly since we got back to Goodneighbor. You gonna tell me what it is?”  
  
“I was not planning on it,” he replied.   
  
She snorted. “Oh, fine. Be that way.”  
  
Her silence seemed carefully calculated to suggest she was simply waiting for him to spill the beans. What was worse was that it was _working_. He wanted to talk if only to fill the expectant silence.   
  
He ground his teeth. “ _Fine._ If you must know, I was jealous.”  
  
“You were _what?_ ”   
  
“ _Jealous_.”  
  
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she said.  
  
“Oh, _thank_ you, mistress. That is helpful.”  
  
He had believed the looks she’d given him, out in the wasteland. But the further they’d got from that raiders’ nest, the more he’d doubted her. He wondered if he’d invented the flush in her cheeks, or the way she’d responded to his touch. The more he replayed it in his mind — and he had replayed it _countless_ times — the more he questioned it. And then, coming back to Goodneighbor, where she’d sunk into Hancock’s arms like that was the place she was meant to be… Hancock she touched all the time, easy as breathing. She never touched _him_ like that. With him there was always hesitation. He knew _why;_ that she respected his bodily autonomy too much to be the one to reach out. At least, not without that half-second’s pause, when she watched for the silent permission he was barely aware of giving. He was deeply grateful for that.   
  
And yet.  
  
“Look.” She turned to him as she walked, stepping backwards carefully over the rubble. “You know this response is irrational. Hancock’s not taking me away from you. I mean, if anyone was going to be jealous, it should be _him_. You’re the one who spends all your time with me.”  
  
“Yet somehow, that does not help,” he said. “And I will not be spending my time with you tomorrow.”  
  
“No.” She fell back into step beside him. “This is personal. Nick’s personal. You don’t have to stay in Diamond City, you don’t have to go back to Goodneighbor, but you can’t come with us.”  
  
He hadn’t voiced how much this fact bothered him, and it was one of the curious things about her that she seemed to recognise it all the same. She had repeated this several times, always in a tone of apology.   
  
“You will have to order me to remain somewhere,” he said, and grit his teeth.   
  
“Can’t I just say ‘don’t follow me’?”  
  
“You can, if you wish. But it will be easier for me if you are specific with your orders.”  
  
She pursed her lips. “Very well,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll think of something. Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to be? If you stayed at Diamond City and someone tried to get you to leave, things could get ugly. But there’s the Slog, Goodneighbor, you could even stay at my place in Sanctuary Hills if you want.”  
  
It did not escape him what a generous gesture that was. The home she had lived in two hundred and ten years ago with her husband and her child. The home she’d left to flee from nuclear annihilation. But Sanctuary Hills was a good few days’ travel and he didn’t know the settlers. The Slog was peaceful, its people friendly, but he would feel on edge there. It had no walls, and there were dangers very close by. Perhaps that was more reason he should go; to protect the place from attack. It was a rare privilege to even be able to make this kind of decision, and he let it roll around in his brain as they skirted Boston Common.  
  
“Goodneighbor,” he said at last.   
  
“Goodneighbor it is.”   
  
The choice was a purely selfish one. She had told him very little about what she was planning on doing with Valentine, but he had the impression that their destination was fairly near to Boston, if not within the city itself. It was always possible he would walk all the way to the Slog only for her to have finished her task by the time he got there. Why add an unnecessary delay, when he could see her again as soon as she was done?  
  
She paused mid-stride, taking his hand as he caught up to her. The most she ever touched him between campsites.  
  
“Listen. This won’t work if you’re jealous,” she said. “I know you’re still not sure what you want. That’s okay. You can take your time working that out. You’re always going to be a part of my life, one way or the other. We’re stuck together now.” She flashed him a smile. “But if the jealousy doesn’t wear off, you’re going to wind up resenting me. I don’t want that. I’d rather just stay friends than have you resent me.”  
  
He stopped, pulling her back to face him.  
  
“I don’t want to be jealous,” he told her. “I know if I asked you to pick, you wouldn’t pick me.”  
  
“You know why?”  
  
He cringed inwardly. He had his suspicions.   
  
“Because you love him,” he said instead.  
  
“Because he _wouldn’t_ ask me to pick.” She lifted his hand, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek.   
  
“He likes that you’re free,” Charon murmured.   
  
“Freedom means a lot to him. He trusts me. I trust him. And I trust _you_.” She squeezed his hand, and turned, pulling him forward with her. “You know, _you_ don’t have to pick, either.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
She shrugged. “I’m saying… If there was anyone else, I’d be fine with that.”  
  
He snorted. “Who else would there be?”  
  
“ _I_ don’t know. Whoever you want.” She grinned at him. “What about the pretty girl at Oberland Station?”  
  
“Don’t tease me, smoothskin,” he grumbled.  
  
“I’m not! She’s cute, brave, fun. You’d like her.”  
  
“I am not interested.”  
  
“Suit yourself.”  
  
“I do not want anyone else.”  
  
She tilted her head up to look at him, a sly smile edging its way across her face.  
  
“You want me, though, right?”  
  
“You have _no_ idea,” he murmured.   
  
“I’m not always sure. You play that shit close to your chest,” she said cheerfully. “It’s tricky, leaving it all up to someone else. I know what _I_ want, but not what _you_ want. Although I suppose, neither do you.”  
  
“What _do_ you want?” he asked her, suddenly curious. He hadn’t really thought too much about it; he was barely willing to accept there was something about him she found attractive.  
  
She looked up at him with a flash of something mysterious in her eyes.  
  
“If I tell you,” she said, “you might feel obliged to…” She trailed off, and grinned to herself. “…To _fulfil my desires.”_  
  
He suppressed a sigh. It was a puzzle to him why she bothered. She had built up all these concerns in her mind, all these worries that he just did not care about.   
  
“Why is that a bad thing?” he asked her. “Why can’t I please you?”  
  
She stopped short, squeezing his hand almost unconsciously.  
  
“Charon, you _already_ please me.”  
  
“You know what I mean.” He bared his teeth, and pulled his hand away so he could hold it out in a hopeless gesture. “Why shouldn’t I give you what you want? The contract doesn’t _make_ me, not unless you give the order. I never gave a damn about any of the others, or what they wanted. You think I went out of my way to _fulfil their desires?_ ”  
  
She was quiet for a moment. Her eyes wandered away from him, as if she was taking stock.   
  
“That’s… Okay.” She took a breath. “See… I worry that you feel like you owe me something. And you don’t, but, whatever, I know why you might feel that way. Is it so out-there to think maybe you’d do something you didn’t enjoy, just to make me happy?”  
  
“I would enjoy making you happy,” he said softly.  
  
She sighed, and reached for his hand again. “I know you would, killer.” She shook her head. “Let’s just play it by ear, all right? Come on. We should get to Diamond City before dark.”  
  
They would be heading through an area in which super mutants sometimes lurked, and Charon took back his hand to grip his shotgun. He glanced at her as they walked, then away, scanning windows and alleyways.  
  
“I am not complaining, mistress, but why bring me with you to Diamond City, just for one night?”  
  
“I wonder,” she said dryly, and then laughed at the look on his face. “Would it shock you if I said I enjoyed your company?”  
  
“…Perhaps.”  
  
She waved a hand. “Honestly it gets lonely at Home Plate. I like having another heartbeat in the house.” She scuffed the sole of her boot against the ground, and looked up at the sky, visible between the looming buildings. “My dad used to say that, after my mother died. He got a cat, see. He’d never liked cats before, but one day this stray turned up and adopted him. He liked the company. Jasper, he called it. A scarred old tomcat.”  
  
“I am your stray?”  
  
“Yep,” she said. “You and MacCready. Nick’s the neighbourhood cat who wanders in for an extra kipper once in a while.”  
  
“You are a strange person.”  
  
“And yet you like me anyway! There’s no accounting for taste, huh?”  
  
He smiled to himself. “This is your way of telling me to stop asking why you like ghouls.”  
  
“Ha! That too. Although I already told you, it’s all about the _texture._ ”  
  
“I assumed you were joking about that.”  
  
“Oh, _god_ no,” she said vehemently, throwing back her head with an expression Charon didn’t think he should be seeing. “Ghouls and their _fucking hands_ , god, you drive me crazy.” She caught the look on his face, and coloured. “Too much information?”  
  
“No, but…” He hesitated. “Should I be making notes? This is something you want? …From _me?_ ”  
  
She gave him a grin that looked a little shaky at the edges. Excited, or nervous, or both.  
  
“I-I mean… yeah, sure. When you’re ready, I mean. I’m not… pressuring you, or anything. I mean, I get that — I mean, given our _positions_ —”  
  
“Smoothskin. Stop talking. You worry too much.” He growled softly, teasing her a little, and reached out to ruffle her hair. “What part of ‘I want to please you’ do you have difficulty understanding?”  
  
All her fucking concerns. It was endearing, almost, the way she cared so much about this. The difficulty of their situation didn’t bother him nearly as much as it probably should. In fact if he were honest with himself, it would almost be _easier_ if she gave him an order. Then at least he wouldn’t be second-guessing himself, wouldn’t be hampered by nervousness. She’d spent last night in Hancock’s bed, and most of the morning too, and it bothered him that, should she decide to take this further, she had so recent an experience for comparison. He did not doubt he could make her happy, but it had been a long time, nevertheless. There had been some stolen moments, in Underworld and in the decades before, but he had rarely bothered with foreplay. He hadn’t had the time, hadn’t been concerned with his partner’s pleasure, just in getting off and getting back to his employer before he was missed.   
  
This was different. _She_ was different.   
  
She was smiling to herself, her cheeks a little pink, and she ducked her head as she walked. Embarrassed? Or…  
  
“The thing is,” she said, “when I tell you you should take the lead, that’s not just for your benefit. I sort of… really like it.” Her blush deepened. “It’s a different side of you. One I don’t get to see much. It’s not exactly altruistic, is what I’m saying.”  
  
“… _Oh_. That… that’s… hmm.” Thank fuck ghouls couldn’t blush. “You liked being my science experiment?”  
  
“Was it that obvious?” She laughed, though there was an awkward, nervous thread to it, and it struck him, suddenly, that she was just as unsure as he was.  
  
Could she not have _said_ that? Fucking Christ, it was such a goddamn relief to know he wasn’t flailing around in the dark by himself. That they were on equal footing here, at least when it came to feeling awkward.  
  
“Obvious,” he allowed, “but…”   
  
“But?”  
  
He hesitated. “If I call you fascinating, is that… strange?”  
  
“No one’s ever called me ‘fascinating’ before,” she said, smiling. “I think I like it.” There was a softness in her face, almost a glow, and she turned her face towards the sky as she walked, eyes wandering along after clouds. “How are the jealousy levels?” she asked after a moment or two.   
  
“Ebbing.”  
  
“Good.” She took a breath. “Because I think we could have something pretty good, Charon. You and me. It would be a sad thing to have to let that go.”  
  
Charon felt his chest clench.  
  
“I… yes.” He swallowed. “I know I have no right to be possessive. I missed you in Goodneighbor, that’s all. I didn’t see you as much as I wanted to.”  
  
“You’re allowed to be a little possessive once in a while,” she said. “Hancock is, when the mood strikes him. You just have to limit it to what one might call the heat of the moment, that’s all.” She smiled to herself. “Anyway… you’ll have me all to yourself tonight.”  
  
That… was true. Fuck.  
  
“I was thinking I’d grab a bottle of something and we could get a little drunk, listen to music, talk… Like a date. A bar date, without the bar.”  
  
“I… would like that,” he said, and cleared his throat.  
  
She beamed. “It’s decided, then.”  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chin-hands* 
> 
> LOOK AT MY BOY ALL GROWN UP GOING ON A PRETEND DATE
> 
> God this chapter's gone through some shit. It's been poked and prodded and ignored for months on end and I'm still not really content with it. Fun fact, the feral attack from chapter 34 started life as an ending to this chapter.


	40. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a bad date, all things considered.
> 
> We unrated now, fuckers. We are crossing the Rubicon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW. This is a long chapter, so plan accordingly; do not read in public. I'm looking at you, Xhimera!

  
  
Sloan closed the door behind them, and dropped her pack with a sigh of relief.  
  
“It’s good to be home,” she admitted. “I’m not a fan of Diamond City, but I do like my little house.”  
  
She pulled something from her pack, and went to one of her many shelves riveted to the wall. Standing on tip-toe, she placed a small metal horse in the middle, and rocked back onto her heels.  
  
“From Glass?” he asked her.  
  
“Yeah.” She smiled fondly at the little horse. “Smaller than they are usually, but I couldn’t go carrying one of the big ones across the Commonwealth. He wanted me to have something. He gave it to me before we left.”  
  
“I think I am the only old ghoul not stuck in the past,” Charon said gruffly.  
  
“If you remembered it,” she said, “you would be.”  
  
“You had one, when you were a girl?”  
  
He could picture her as a child. Skinny and tough, with scraped knees and an obstinate look in her eyes.  
  
“No. They didn’t make them back then, the horses. I was a teenager when they started making Buttercups. Always kind of wished they’d made ‘em when I was a kid, though. I would have killed for a pony, growing up. I guess a lot of girls felt like that.” She gazed at the toy, worrying her lip with her teeth. “I wonder what girls grow up dreaming of now?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know.”  
  
“No, I guess not.” She slipped off her jacket, and collapsed into the diner booth in her kitchen. “It really is good to be home,” she said. “To be honest, it’s mostly just a place to dump my stuff. But it’s comfortable. I worked hard to make it comfortable. It’s no Cabot Manor, but…”  
  
“It is comfortable.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He drifted around the perimeter, looking not for the first time up at the signs and old posters decorating her walls. She even had one of the Silver Shroud, which made him smile. It hadn’t meant anything to him, the first time he was here. It was strange being back, for the first time in months, looking at her collections with a whole different understanding of who she was.  
  
“Have you brought Hancock here?” he wondered aloud. It seemed strange that she wouldn’t have; that this, her sanctum sanctorum, was some part of her he hadn’t seen.  
  
“Once or twice. Honestly he doesn’t like coming back to Diamond City much, but he wanted to talk with the guys who run the Dugout and I wanted to show him my place, so… Most people here just pretend they don’t see him. I’ve had a few warnings from the guards but mostly just to move on.”  
  
“Why is he different?”  
  
She paused, toying with one of the cords on her pack.  
  
“He used to live here, remember? It was a long time ago, though. Not everyone knows who he is — well, who he was. I don’t think it’s something that’s talked about, and he looked different then. But they… I think they feel like if they acknowledge him, if they… push things, it’d only make matters a lot worse. He’s trouble, and they know it. Diamond City folk don’t really like to cause a _scene,_ and he’s a scene all by himself.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “I’m going to give Valentine those tapes,” she said, hopping up off the seat. “I’ll grab a bottle of something on my way back. What are you in the mood for?”  
  
They were alone and the door was closed, and he was in the mood for a great number of things he couldn’t say. He dared to reach out, to stroke the back of his finger down the side of her cheek, and almost shivered at the softness of her skin.  
  
“Whatever pleases you,” he said.  
  
“I’m asking _you,_ ” she said with an enigmatic smile.  
  
“Bourbon, then. Do you like bourbon?”  
  
“I like a lot of things.”  
  
That sounded like it meant more than it said. He allowed himself to read any number of things into the smile she threw over her shoulder as she went out the door.  
  
The wait was an experience in frustration and confusion. He finally had her to himself, somewhere safe, with a _bed_. He didn’t doubt her affections and he certainly intended to ensure she didn’t doubt his, but she was still the _mistress,_ the employer. There were lines between them that he found difficult to cross.  
  
He didn’t know what she intended, how far she was willing to go. He didn’t even know how far _he_ was willing to go.  
  
He paced the room, trying to distract himself by perusing her shelves and failing utterly. He was _nervous,_ damnit. Like a boy. He growled to himself. Fucking Hancock would find this hilarious.  
  
He heard a key in the lock, and he froze, almost expecting someone else to step through the door. But it was her, smiling to herself like a cat that had managed to find some fresh pre-war cream. She pushed the door shut with her hip, and lifted a bottle.  
  
“Bourbon, as requested,” she said, and handed it to him as she crossed the room to the kitchen.  
  
He brushed his hand across the label, and cocked his head to one side.  
  
“This is good bourbon,” he told her.  
  
“Well, good. I _asked_ for quality stuff, but honestly I never know whether or not Vadim is screwing me.” She kicked off her boots and went over to her kitchen, reaching up on her tip-toes to get some glasses from her cupboard. Her shirt rode up her back as she stretched, exposing a band of pale skin. “You want ice?” she asked, looking over her shoulder. “I have _ice._ Not fun ice, but still.”  
  
“Yes. Please.”  
  
Charon took a seat at her diner booth, ignoring his nerves and allowing his eyes to linger on her hips as she dropped ice cubes into a glass.  
  
“You are beautiful,” he told her, as she sauntered across the room. “You know that?”  
  
She shrugged, and set his drink down before him.  
  
“So I’ve been told,” she said, slipping into the booth opposite. She held her drink between both hands, her lips resting just below the rim.  
  
He hesitated. “Should I… not have said that?”  
  
She smiled at him, and took a mouthful of bourbon. “I like that you think I’m pretty. But I won’t be pretty forever. That’s all.”  
  
“I think you will.”  
  
“I’ll remind you of that, in thirty years. When I’m all wrinkly and grey.”  
  
“Ha, _thirty years?_ If you still hold my contract in thirty years…” He shook his head. “Good things, in my experience, do not last anywhere near that long.”  
  
“Let’s not start down that road.” She knocked the base of her glass against his. “You know the bourbon; you said it was good. Tell me about it. And then I’ll tell you about the time I got super drunk in law school and woke up naked in the woods with three of my friends.”  
  
A glass and a half of bourbon later, Charon’s nervousness had eased. Sloan had shed her gloves, and he his armour, dropping it over the back of the booth beside the weights bench she never used.  
  
Sloan, given courage by alcohol or by their new closeness, had started studying his torn, ghoulish skin with a fascination he had not expected. She seemed entranced by the great swathes of missing skin on his left arm, tracing her fingers up along the blue of his veins.  
  
“It’s _so_ cool,” she breathed, bending her head for a better look. “I mean, I can see your whole bicep. All those muscle fibres…”  
  
“You have seen them before.”  
  
“Not this close. Didn’t want to stare and make you uncomfortable. And I couldn’t _touch_ you, of course. Ghouls are always so weird about touching and you’re _you._ I’ve no right to touch you. Not like this. Didn’t want to make you feel like… like a _thing._ ”  
  
“Foolish smoothskin,” he murmured.  
  
“You can’t act like it wouldn’t. It would.” She traced her finger down along the blue of his vein, from almost his shoulder, down along his forearm to his wrist.  
  
“Hancock does not have missing skin?”  
  
She shrugged. “Yeah, but not like this. I mean this arm has massive patches missing, you can really see everything. Veins and tendons, muscles…” She glanced up at him. “Will you flex for me?”  
  
He sat back, a little surprised.  
  
“What will you do for _me?”_ he teased her.  
  
She grinned, tilting her head to one side. “Well… I don’t know. What would you like?”  
  
“I would like a lot of things,” he said. “Many things… that I should not say.”  
  
“That sounds intriguing.”  
  
“Do not tempt me, mistress.”  
  
“No?” She leant a little closer. “And why not?”  
  
“This… you…” He huffed an exhale. “You drive me mad, woman.”  
  
She grinned at him. “I don’t see why _you_ should be allowed to tempt _me,_ and not the other way around. After all, you can do something about it.” She bit her bottom lip in a way Charon found most unfair. “I really shouldn’t, though, should I?”  
  
She pulled away, sliding from the booth to fetch the bourbon, and Charon watched her with a feeling between relief and regret.  
  
“I don’t know what I want,” he reminded her.  
  
“I know,” she said, and then paused. “I’m going too fast, aren’t I?” She nodded to herself as she topped up their glasses. “I tell you to take the lead and then I push you to hurry up. That’s not fair of me.”  
  
“If you did not push we would never get anywhere,” he admitted.  
  
“I don’t believe that,” she said, sliding back into the booth opposite. “You just need a little confidence. Give it time. And maybe another drink.”  
  
He was already concerned that the drink was making him too forward. She was meant to be pulling him back, keeping him in line. Not letting him take the lead. It was too much freedom, and he wasn’t sure how to tell her that.  
  
“…Do you remember,” he asked haltingly, “when I started the fight in the bar?”  
  
She laughed. “How could I forget? I still owe Hancock some alcohol.”  
  
He winced. “I make bad choices when I am free. I do things I should not do.” He met her eyes, just for a moment, and then looked away. “You have control for a reason. I need you to use it.”  
  
“Charon.” Her voice was low, smoky. She waited until he looked up, and smiled at him. “I still have control. If there’s something I don’t like, I will tell you. I won’t let you do anything that I’m not comfortable with.”  
  
He exhaled in relief, and nodded.  
  
“That… that is important.”  
  
Sloan toyed with her glass, turning it on the table in front of her so that the ice cubes clinked against one another.  
  
“Will you do something for me?” she asked him.  
  
“You know I must do as you command.”  
  
“I’m _asking,_ Charon.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“If I get… carried away,” she said, “I need — I’m asking you to tell me if I accidentally give you an order. I need you to tell me, so I can take it back.”  
  
“What if the order is something I want?”  
  
“I’d still feel wrong about it. Making you do something that wasn’t your choice, even if it was something you were happy about. That’s not… I mean,” she stammered, a hint of pink rising to her cheeks, “a-actually I’d be okay with that, sometimes, but only if it was something we decided beforehand, together. Something we both agreed on, with safety checks and everything.”  
  
He didn’t know what she meant by that. He wasn’t sure he much cared, either. She could give him all the orders she wanted.  
  
He reached over to take her wrist in his hand, and unbuckled her pip boy, setting it aside. He traced his fingers up the cool skin of her arm, following her veins the way she had done to him. Almost unbearably smooth. He reached her elbow, and traced back down to wrist again, and let his thumb rest against her pulse, just for a moment. Her fingers twitched.  
  
“That tickles a bit,” she told him as he traced his way back up her arm. “Are you ticklish? What does it feel like, where the skin is missing?”  
  
“I cannot compare to… to human sensation,” he said, without looking up. “I cannot remember. I have to think many of the nerves are gone, but it seems to make no difference. I am not ticklish. As far as I know. It is not as if many people have tried.”  
  
“When I first got to know some ghouls, I thought maybe it hurt. If that was why they didn’t like touching.”  
  
“We are just unused to it.” He brushed his finger against her palm, and then reached up to slide his hand into her hair. “It is easy to be overwhelmed.”  
  
“Well, _you_ seem to be getting used to it, at least.” She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch just a little.  
  
“I am… experimenting,” he admitted.  
  
“Experimenting? …Oh, your science experiment.”  
  
“Yes.” He twisted his fingers through her hair, grazing against her scalp. “You fascinate me. And… I am seeing what I can get away with.”  
  
She chuckled at that, but said nothing. Perhaps that was better… it would ruin the fun if she were to tell him how far he could go.  
  
She grazed the back of her hand down his forearm, and watched as a muscle twitched.  
  
“I wonder if there’s actual hypersensitivity,” she mused.  
  
“You have experience enough with touching ghouls.”  
  
“ _A_ ghoul. Hancock’s been using chems for _years,_ though… I’ve asked him all this stuff, but I’m not sure his experience is universal. And he’s only been a ghoul for around ten years. Maybe that makes a difference.”  
  
“He does not seem the kind of ghoul who would have stopped touching people.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Charon combed his fingers through her hair, letting the locks fall over themselves. He was beginning to feel as if the table between them was in the way. That perhaps she should be sitting closer.  
  
“Shall I wash it again?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“My hair.”  
  
“Why would you?”  
  
“You seemed to like it, when I did. You said it was soft.”  
  
“You would do something because I liked it?”  
  
“Of course. I’d do a lot of things, just to make you happy.”  
  
He met her eyes, and saw she was smiling.  
  
“That is…kind. Generous. You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“I know that, Charon. You silly thing.” She turned her face to press a kiss onto his palm.  
  
Their glasses were empty again, and when she had retrieved the bottle to fill them he caught her hand, pulling her over to his side of the table.  
  
“Sit with me, beauty,” he said.  
  
She smiled, and slid into the booth beside him, the length of her thigh pressed up against his. It was enough to make him immediately regret it. The table had been in the way, but on reflection that was probably better. At least sitting across from him she could not glance down and see the effect she had on him. At least, when the table was between them, he wasn’t tempted to pull her into his lap.  
  
She put the bottle down, and slid him his glass. She dropped her hand to rest it on her leg, but he could feel the backs of her fingers against his own thigh and he was fairly sure that was intentional.  
  
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he rasped.  
  
“Not really. But nor do you.”  
  
“I am a greedy man.”  
  
“Now you’re trying to turn me on.”  
  
He _had_ been trying to warn her, or something like it. He forced his gaze away from her, and picked up his glass of bourbon. Perhaps the ice would cool him down.  
  
Then she moved, shifted, and he felt her hand on his leg, bracing herself. He looked down at her sharply, but she was leaning across him, reaching out for her pip-boy and pulling it closer.  
  
She clicked a button, and sighed.  
  
“Crap. It’s later than I thought,” she said. “I have to leave early tomorrow. Valentine and I have to go do his thing.” She pouted, turning her glass in her hands. “I guess I should be getting to bed.”  
  
It _was_ late. Nearly midnight, and she woke before dawn. Probably for the best; he was already getting carried away.  
  
Still, Sloan didn’t seem in a hurry to move. She shifted, if anything, a little closer, and Charon tried what she had done earlier, letting his hand settle on his leg and then moving it a little to brush against hers, grazing his knuckles against her thigh.  
  
Her lips twitched into a smile, and she reached down to take his hand, and squeeze it.  
  
“Sorry to cut out drinking short.” She rubbed her thumb over his knuckles. “You know, it’s going to be weird without you. I’m going to be looking over my shoulder, wondering where you’ve got to.”  
  
“I could come with you.”  
  
“Nice try, but no. I’m afraid I can’t bring anyone else along on this one.” She sighed to herself and chewed on her lip, looking a little regretful. “We really _should_ get to bed…”  
  
“Am I distracting you?” He slid his free hand into her hair, hooking a lock behind her ear.  
  
She muttered something under her breath, and shook her head, but he wasn’t sure the gesture was meant for him. She swallowed down half her glass of bourbon, and set it back on the tabletop with a _clunk._  
  
“Bed,” she said again, as much to herself as to him, and then slipped out of the booth. He watched the sway of her hips for a moment before he followed suit, tossing back his glass and the rest of hers before heading towards the stairs. She stopped in front of her bed, looking back at him with her eyebrows raised.  
  
“Where are you going?” she asked him.  
  
“To bed,” he said.  
  
“We sleep in the same bed in Goodneighbor. No reason you should run off; my bed’s plenty big.” She drew her curtain, and he could see her silhouette as she peeled off her shirt.  
  
He hesitated. The size of the bed — and it was, admittedly, one of the largest he’d seen in a while — was not what concerned him. Things had changed since they’d shared a bed in Goodneighbor. He had kissed her, and she had looked at him like… like she actually _wanted_ him. He wouldn’t touch her unless she wanted it, but they’d had a few drinks and he wasn’t sure he was ready for whatever she had planned.  
  
“A-are you… sure?”  
  
She poked her head around the corner of the curtain, and smiled at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep my hands to myself.”  
  
“Maybe I don’t want you to,” he said, and then wondered where that had come from. The bourbon, probably.  
  
“I’ll need some convincing,” she said, her smile widening into a grin. “Give me a moment to finish getting changed.”  
  
He turned resolutely away from the curtain, and sat down on the stairs to unlace his boots. The first time they’d shared a bed there’d been none of this nonsense, no shake in his hands, no nervous energy. She’d been asleep and he had been tired, and they had slept.  
  
He heard the swish of the curtain, and looked around to see her slipping under the covers. She sat back against her pillows with a wry smile.  
  
“Sleep where you want, Charon,” she said kindly. “Believe it or not, I don’t have any ulterior motives. I’m not going to pounce on you. Not unless you want me to.”  
  
Her bed did look comfortable, with all its soft blankets. He padded across the floor to her little alcove, and pulled off his shirt, dropping it onto the floor beside the bed, followed by his belt.  
  
“Turn out the light, hmm?”  
  
He found the switch by the door, and when he turned back, her alcove with its table lamp seemed a little cave of light. Warm, cosy.  
  
She had snuggled down under the covers, lying on her belly with her head pillowed on her arms.  
  
“You have all these pillows, and you don’t use them?” he asked as he slid into bed beside her.  
  
“I use ‘em. Just not for sleeping on.” Her eyes were closed, a small smile on her lips.  
  
He rested his head on the pillow, and, haltingly, reached across under the blanket to lay his hand on the small of her back. It was, for him, a daring move, but _god,_ he wanted her. If nothing else, he just wanted to _touch_ her, to feel her smooth skin under his fingers, to have her be, in some way, close to him.  
  
Her smile grew. She creaked open one eye and looked at him.  
  
“Am I too far away?”  
  
He huffed a laugh. “You could be nearer.”  
  
She shifted over, turning to lie on her side, and his hand slipped from her back to the curve of her waist. He almost snatched it back, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. And she was warmer than a human ought to be.  
  
She reached out, her hand hovering between them.  
  
“Can… Can I…?”  
  
“You do not have to ask, smoothskin.”  
  
“Of course I have to ask.” She let her fingers slide up his arm. “Look at where we are. I don’t want to overstep.”  
  
“You’ve never had problems reading me before.”  
  
“I’ve had three glasses of bourbon and I don’t want to fool myself,” she said, and grinned. “You think I’m a crack sniper when I’m drunk?”  
  
“Probably.” He pulled her closer, their heads side by side on the pillow. She was _here_ and she was _warm_ and all those uncertainties were burning away, and it was the most natural thing in the world to move his hand to her cheek and press his lips against hers.  
  
He still wasn’t used to this, the feeling of kissing a human. There had been so few before her, all lost in vague half-memories that might just be fantasies. His own lips were torn and scarred, hardened like all a ghoul’s skin, and hers were so _soft_ it almost killed him. The voice in the back of his mind still yelled out its warnings, that this was his _employer,_ that this was _wrong,_ but it was so easy, too easy, to push it all away. He was teetering on the edge of disaster and he refused to care.  
  
Her tongue slid into his mouth and he moaned, pulled her closer. He wanted to devour her. He broke away to drag his mouth down the curve of her throat, her skin like silk, like heaven. He closed his lips over where her neck met her shoulder, sucked just a little where her pulse beat against his lips. For half a second he saw the blood leaking out between his fingers and then she _gasped_ and it wiped every thought from his mind. His nerves sang for her. She was _perfect_.  
  
He shifted over her, bracing himself on one elbow and kissing his way down across her chest, his hand rising to her neck. He felt the throb of her blood under her skin like a benediction, and pressed a kiss to the pale skin above the neck of her tank top, just above one breast.  
  
_“Mistress,”_ he murmured, and let his hand drop to drag up the hem of her tank top, his fingers splayed out across her ribs.  
  
She ran her fingers through his hair.  
  
“You shouldn’t call me that,” she said, breathless. “Not here.”  
  
She was so soft, and he was having trouble paying attention to what she was saying. Why did it matter where they were? He kissed her chest again, her sternum, and she caught his jaw, tilting his head so he could see her face.  
  
“Charon? If you call me mistress in bed, then I’ll be your mistress.” She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling.  
  
“You _are_ my mistress.”  
  
“No, I mean…” She giggled softly. “I mean, in bed, it’s… _you_ know. A game of power. And that’s fine sometimes... But not this time. Not if you want…” She hesitated. “I’m saying… not until later, Charon. We should be equals, at least at the start.”  
  
Another one of her concerns about orders and authority. She was letting him kiss her, letting him touch her, and better, she was _enjoying_ it. What else could he want? Why did she think he would care about that?  
  
“You will always be my mistress,” he said, placing a reverent kiss to her collarbone.  
  
“I know that, but not… Not here.”  
  
“I do not care about being equals.”  
  
“ _I_ care.”  
  
She cupped his cheek again, and he looked up at her, saw the waver in her eyes, and sighed.  
  
“We can pretend, just for a little while,” she said. “We can be partners. Besides…” She bit her bottom lip, and a sparkle came back to her eyes. “I was kind of hoping that once in a while, _you_ might give the orders.”  
  
_That_ threw him. He pulled away from her and sat back on his heels. _He_ could…?  
  
She followed, sitting up and crossing her legs in front of him.  
  
“Would you like that?” she asked. “If I called you master?”  
  
He felt a shiver go through him, to hear her say that word, and growled deep in his throat. He reached out, trailing his finger down the length of her scar and then taking her chin in his hand, his thumb rubbing against her bottom lip. Christ, it was enough to drive him feral.  
  
“I would like that far too fucking much,” he said, and let his hand drop. “That’s… something you…?”  
  
“ _Definitely._ I’d enjoy that. Being told what to do, being… dominated.” She reached up, inching the cloth of his vest up just a little so she could run a finger along the ridges of his skin.  
  
“You would _allow_ that?”  
  
She slid forward a little, pushing herself up onto her knees. “Oh, yes.” She leant forward, and pressed a kiss against his collarbone. Her lips were cool against his skin. “Power means responsibility, though. You will have to be attentive. Do you think you can do that?”  
  
Control, power… it was more than an aphrodisiac. It was like jet, setting his nerves on fire, stilling his breath in his lungs. That day in the raiders’ nest, knowing he was making her breath come faster, tasting adrenaline at the back of his mouth… The possibilities were too great. Be attentive? God, every movement she made, every sound, was bound into his nerves and veins. But it scared him all the same, that he might lose himself in her, and end up doing something she didn’t want.  
  
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I am not supposed to have _power_. I like it too much. And you said… you said you would stay in control.”  
  
“Subs always have control.” She was still touching him, her fingers dancing along his shoulder, down to tug at the collar of his vest. “Me, or you, or anyone. It’s the submissive one who says stop, or go.”  
  
The vest was in the way, like the table had been. He pulled it off and tossed it down to the ground beside the bed, and the look of delight on her face sent a throb through his cock. He was _so_ damn hard.  
  
“I know what I want,” he said abruptly.  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“I want _you,_ ” he growled.  
  
She pulled her tank top over her head. “I’m all yours.”  
  
He was caught between the desire to kneel here and just _look_ at her and the driving need to bend and take one of those perfect nipples into his mouth. She had said she was his, _all_ his, and that meant he could touch her, didn’t it? That she really _wanted_ this?  
  
He slid his hand up the curve of her waist, trailed the side of a finger under the swell of her breast and then cupped it in his hand, her nipple hard against his palm. With a soft growl he reached out to wrap his other arm around her back and pull her closer, bending his head to suck the soft skin of her throat between his teeth. She made a soft sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan, and Charon bit down a little harder.  
  
He was wearing too many clothes. So was she, and that was a problem that sounded more fun to solve. He wrapped both arms around her waist to lift her up and then dropped her back onto the mattress. She let out a squeak of surprise, and he paused long enough to kiss her on the lips before trailing more kisses down her chest, her abdomen, until he reached her hips and eased her shorts down her legs. He tossed them into a corner, and pressed a kiss to the waistband of her panties.  
  
“For a man who hasn’t had a lot of practice lately, you’re very good at this,” she said.  
  
“Shh. No talking, smoothskin.”  
  
“Afraid I might give you an order?”  
  
He looked up, and saw she was smiling at him, one tooth biting down on her lip.  
  
“Are _you?”_  
  
“I’ve almost told you to take your pants off about three times. MacCready’s right, we may need a ball gag.”  
  
“But then I wouldn’t be able to kiss you.”  
  
“That’s a point. I would miss your kisses.”  
  
She held her arms out to him, and he obliged, kissing her as one hand slid to the waistband of her panties. She lifted her hips, and he pulled back long enough to drag them from her. He tossed them aside as he kissed her again.  
  
He _was_ out of practice, and it surprised him how easy it was, how natural it felt to touch her. It had been ten years since the odd stolen moment, quick and dirty, when Willow had talked him into keeping Ahzruhal waiting, and that had been nothing like this. No, he’d never touched Willow like this. He wasn’t sure he’d touched _any_ woman like this: his hand buried in her hair, the other tracing reverently along the softness of her side, reaching down to rub his fingers along her opening.  
  
She was _wet,_ wetter than he expected, and it thrilled him that his touch could make her respond that way. He ran a hand up the curve of her side as he slid his fingers inside her. She clenched down on him, tight, and fucking _Christ_ he was going to lose his mind, he was going to lose every part of himself to her. Willingly. He started gently thrusting his fingers, and watched her face as he circled his thumb around her nub. Her breath hitched, and she let out a soft cry, arching her back, and Charon smiled to himself as he he bent his head to press a gentle kiss to the side of her throat.  
  
“Mistress,” he murmured.  
  
“Not mistress,” she said in a strangled voice.  
  
He pressed his forehead against hers, feeling a pang of something he couldn’t place. That she would care enough, in the midst of her pleasure, to still make sure they were equals... He slipped his fingers from her, trailing wetness along her skin as he gripped the outside of her thigh.  
  
“Sloan,” he said, and she wrapped a leg around his waist.  
  
“Charon.”  
  
“Are you sure you want this?”  
  
She opened her eyes, cupping his cheek with one hand.  
  
“Are you looking for an out?” she asked him, her forehead furrowed. “You don’t need to do that, Charon. If you want to stop, just say so. We’ll stop.”  
  
He almost laughed. “They’d have to drag me away with wild radstags. I want this. I want _you._ ” He kissed her, briefly, and pressed his forehead back against hers. “I was making sure you hadn’t come to your senses.”  
  
“No danger of that happening.” She smirked at him, and reached a hand down between them to rub the hard bulge in his pants.  
  
He buried his head in the crook of her neck, and groaned.  
  
“And it should be acknowledged,” she said, “that of the two of us, you are the one _still_ wearing pants.” She raised her hand to his jaw and tilted his head up to kiss him again, slow, indulgent. He felt her cold toes against his skin, and then she tucked one into the waistband of his trousers and tugged on them.  
  
He broke away, affecting a frown. “Impatient,” he scolded her.  
  
“I want to see you,” she said, rocking her hips up to meet his.  
  
He growled low in his throat. “Stop that. I wanted to please you first… It’s been a long time, smoothskin. I’ll get carried away.”  
  
“Good.” She grinned. “If you’re worried about going the distance, don’t be. You know how to use those fingers.”  
  
“I am worried,” he said, dipping his head to graze his lips along her jaw, “of hurting you. It has been a long time. You understand me?”  
  
She shivered under his hands. “Maybe that’s what I want.” Her thumb brushed across his cheekbone, where the flesh parted and the bone was almost visible beneath. She studied his face, quiet and solemn. “You can’t hurt me. You know that.”  
  
He didn’t know why this part made him nervous. If she was going to be disgusted, she would have put a stop to this a long time ago. So he nodded, and pulled back, climbing off the bed and turning around to remove his pants and his underwear, tossing them down beside the bed with his shirt. He swallowed, and turned around to see her push herself up off the bed.  
  
“Dang,” she said, her eyebrows rising.  
  
“What does that face mean?” he asked her. He stepped forward, one knee on the mattress, unsure whether or not to reach out to her.  
  
“Means _dang._ I’m gonna choke on that thing.”  
  
“I wouldn’t ask you to — _God_.” He broke off as her hand closed around him. “You don’t h-have to…”  
  
“But I can if I want to?” She lowered her head, and he opened his eyes to see her watching him as she took him into her mouth.  
  
“You — _fuck — yes._ ”  
  
He wound his fingers into her hair, desperately trying to keep his hips still. Her mouth on him was _hot_ and _slick_ and the goddamn sight of her pretty lips wrapped around his length was enough to drive him mad.  
  
“Fucking _Christ._ That feels _so good,_ ” he hissed. “Don’t fucking stop.”  
  
She hummed, out of pleasure or satisfaction he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. The vibration of her lips on his dick made him gasp and he thrust into her mouth.  
  
He felt her tap her hand against his thigh and looked down as she pushed herself off of him.  
  
“Okay,” she said, wiping a little drool from the corner of her mouth. “Careful with that, or I really _will_ choke.”  
  
“I didn’t — I —”  
  
She had her hand on him again, the other reaching up behind his neck and tugging him down for a kiss.  
  
“I love sucking your cock,” she said in a breathy voice, and pressed her cheek against his. “I intend to do it again. Maybe one night I’ll tell you not to move your hips, and tease you all night.”  
  
“You could tell me now.”  
  
“Not tonight. No orders tonight.”  
  
She kissed him again, sinking back onto the covers and pulling him down with her. Every part of her was pressed against him, his cock against her thigh, her breasts against his chest, and he closed his eyes and lost himself in her. Her smell, her taste, the damnable smoothness of her skin. Her hands on him. She trailed one hand down his back to his ass, pulling him closer still.  
  
“Tell me to stop,” he panted, pressing his face into her shoulder and trying, just for a moment, to ignore the silkiness of her thigh against the hard length of his cock.  
  
“Do you want to stop?”  
  
“ _No._ God, Sloan, _I want you._ ”  
  
“Then —” She broke off, and cursed. “Fuck. I’m trying to — everything is an order. Charon, _please._ ”  
  
She rocked up against him, and he read the need in her eyes. He responded to it automatically, his need as strong as hers, stronger. It had been _years_ and never, never with anyone like her. Not with someone he cared about. He’d never wanted anyone like this, with every fucking nerve on fire for her.  
  
He shifted, reaching down to rub the head of his cock against her wetness. The fucking _heat_ of her wiped every doubt from his mind. He groaned and grasped at her hips, pulling her closer, and he closed his lips over her neck as he thrust and buried himself in her. _Her,_ Sloan, his mistress, his angel out of time. And _fuck_ she was tight. Goddamn it. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes, and then he moved and she made a sound at the back of her throat that destroyed any half-formed thought he had of being gentle. He wanted to hear that sound again.  
  
He raised his head to see her eyes were closed, one tooth biting hard on her bottom lip. He shifted, angling his hips to press deeper. His dick bumped up against her end, and she made the sound again, that strangled moan, _god,_ it was the best fucking thing he’d ever heard.  
  
She trailed her hands up his sides, over his shoulders, setting his nerves on fire. She let one hand rest on the side of his neck — the first part of him she’d ever really touched — the other clutching at his back. Her legs were locked around his waist, one foot pressing against the small of his back, pulling him deeper into her, urging him on.  
  
_“God, Charon,”_ she gasped.  
  
He couldn’t have enough of her. He would have drowned in her, if he could. His hand gripped her thigh, squeezing firm muscle, then rising up over the curve of her hip to that impossible waist. Perfect, she was _perfect_. Hot and wet and so fucking responsive. He shifted her, just a little, enough to slide his hand under her back and down her smooth skin. Those _hips, fuck_. He rested his palm against her ass cheek, fingers tightening, digging into her skin.  
  
“You’ll drive me feral, woman,” he growled against her neck.  
  
“I fucking hope not,” she said breathlessly.  
  
At this point he wasn’t sure he cared. If this was how he lost his mind, with her cunt clenching around him, there was no better way to go.  
  
She was gasping, whispering expletives, her mouth open in a way that was nakedly carnal. She shifted, curling her long limbs around him, pulling him closer, _deeper,_ as if echoing his need to devour her, be one with her in every way he could. Her nails raked up his back, not enough to sting, just enough to heighten his pleasure. One of her legs slipped from his hips, her foot trailing down to hook around the back of his knee. As if to keep him locked inside her, where he belonged.  
  
He was getting close now, his breathing ragged, and he tried to slow his thrusts, to hold out a little longer. _God,_ the fucking _sounds_ she made. Each time his cock brushed up against the apex of her cunt she made a soft, mewling moan that made his balls tighten and an ember glow in his chest. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, yes, _fuck_.  
  
“Beauty,” he rasped, pressing his forehead against hers. “Beauty, _my_ beauty, _mine_.”  
  
He was right on the crest, lost, consumed by her, and he heard her gasp his name just as he hit his peak. The world shattered around him and he cried out, grunting as he spent himself in her, hand tightening on her hip, lost to that intense white-hot pleasure. He kissed her viciously, almost cruelly, and thrust into her again, again, and then she came, clenching around him with a strangled cry, her fingers tangled in his hair.  
  
He moved slowly inside of her as her orgasm passed, her walls fluttering around him, milking echoes of his own pleasure. He kissed her again.  
  
This was where he was meant to be, buried in her to the hilt, his tongue in her mouth, her breath in his lungs. She was _his_. His lover, his mistress, his fucking perfection.  
  
He pulled back just a little, and brushed the hair away from her face as he looked down at her.  
  
“Thank you,” he gasped.  
   
She chuckled breathlessly, reaching up to cup his cheek.  
  
“That was fucking incredible. We could have been doing that this  _whole time._ We must have been mad.”  
  
He almost laughed, and pulled out of her to settle himself down on the mattress beside her. As if, before tonight, he could ever have imagined doing this. Fucking her.  
  
“Again?” he asked, barely daring to hope. He brushed a self-conscious caress along her side.  
  
She laughed, and glanced over at the clock beside her bed.  
  
“Right now? I’d love to, but I have to be up in about four hours. I need my beauty sleep.”  
  
“You could not possibly be more beautiful than you are right now.”  
  
“I look a mess,” she said with a smile, running her fingers through her hair. “All red and sweaty and my hair’s a tangle…”  
  
“Beautiful,” he repeated.  
  
She gave him a lop-sided grin, loaded with more affection than he would have thought possible. She leant over for a kiss, and then pulled away to climb off the bed, wrapping a blanket around herself.  
  
“Gotta have a shower,” she said at his enquiring expression.  
  
Charon tried to hide his disappointment. He liked the idea of her smelling of him, his touch. Was she so impatient to wash him off of her? He felt coldness flare in his chest.  
  
“You don’t have to look like that,” she told him. “It’s just if I don’t shower I’ll have to take a rad-away, and I’m not in the mood for it at the moment.”  
  
“… _Oh_.”  
  
“Yeah. The downside of radioactive spunk.” Her grin widened.  
  
“I shouldn’t have — I should have asked,” he stammered, and she laughed.  
  
“Darling, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” She leant over to kiss him again, and the coldness disappeared, replaced with a warmth that filled him entirely. “You can get some sleep,” she said, straightening. “I’ll try not to wake you.”  
  
He did not intend to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the shower, but when he opened them again the light was off, and she was lying in bed beside him.  
  
  


 

 


	41. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cold light of morning

  
  
He’d watched her sleep plenty of times. How was it so new?   
  
She had never seemed so perfect before, so delicate, so _alive_. He kept wanting to reach over and touch her, kiss her — but he didn’t want to risk waking her. She needed her sleep. And it wasn’t right, to touch her when she couldn’t push him away.  
  
It was time to admit to himself that he loved her. He’d known he felt _something_ for her from the moment the deathclaw ripped out her throat. It had terrified him, that feeling, and he’d shied away from it. He’d wanted to put distance between them, desperately, and somehow in the attempt they had ended up closer. After the time they’d spent at the Slog, he had known on some level that one day he _could_ love her. A part of him had dreaded it then, dreaded what it meant. How it would kill him when she died and his contract passed to someone else. He knew it wouldn’t be worth the suffering, but he hadn’t been able to keep himself from daring it anyway. He‘d never been a dreamer, never fantasized about having things that he knew he could not have, but this had been a _possibility,_ still _was_ a possibility. Maybe it would never truly be worth the suffering that would follow, but how could he willingly step away from the only chance at happiness he’d ever known?  
  
If he had ever been in love before, he couldn’t remember it now. And who could there have been? Another slave, a servant? A prisoner? Had there been someone before all this, before he’d been a ghoul, before even the contract? It was all lost. He closed his eyes briefly as he realised that in another two hundred years, she might be lost as well.  
  
No. It would not come to that. He would… he… if he thought about her every day, he would not forget her. And that would not be difficult. It would hurt a great deal more than pushing the memories away and trying to make himself cold, stoic, to survive whatever employers that came after… but there was no part of him that could bear to let her go.  
  
She shifted in her sleep, just a little, and his heart clenched.  
  
Was love supposed to be this painful? Was it supposed to hurt to watch her breathe?   
  
She would probably know. He scoffed to himself at the thought of ever asking her.  
  
Did she love _him?_ She had called him ‘love’ before, back when he was dying with a raider’s bullet in his chest. He had wondered, during late-night reveries, whether she had meant it.   
  
She rolled onto her side, pulling the blankets closer, and a lump formed in Charon’s throat. Despite it all, despite the kisses they had shared over the past week and her warm touch the night before, there was still a small, irrational, but unquenchable fear that she would wake and feel only regret. That she would see him, and realise what she had done, and want to take it back. Charon wanted this moment, the quiet hours before she woke, to last as long as possible.  
  
She tugged at the blankets again, and he tried to hush her, to lull her back to sleep before she truly woke. Instead she screwed up her face, and drew her feet up to press her icy toes against his thigh.  
  
“You’re too far away,” she mumbled. “’m cold.”  
  
Charon hesitated. This, at least, was not regret. Did she know who he was? Or did she think he was Hancock? Either way he was not going to let her freeze, especially when he had the chance to touch her again. He shuffled a little closer, and reached out an arm with the intent of wrapping it around her waist. Instead he found himself tracing the curve of her hip. His touch was feather-light, marvelling at the smoothness of her skin, the very fact that he could touch her this way at all.  
  
She sighed, pushing herself upright, and Charon snatched back his hand.  
  
“Was — was that wrong?”  
  
He could hardly see her, but he thought perhaps her forehead furrowed as she looked down at him in the gloom. “Hmm? Oh, no, honey, that was nice. But you were too far away. Just — here...”   
  
She pushed at his shoulder, and he turned onto his back. She waited until he was comfortable, and then slid over to curl herself against his side, her leg across his thigh, her hand on his chest. She looped his arm around her, and put his hand on the curve of her waist. Then she settled down with her head on his shoulder, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.  
  
“There we are,” she said. “Now I’m warm.”  
  
Charon closed his eyes. He might have slept a little more tonight, but he didn’t see how he could with her pressed up against him like this. Her skin was cool, but everywhere she touched him, he burned.   
  
“You are a very distracting woman,” he whispered to her, and she hummed a laugh.  
  
“If you’re one of those people who can’t sleep with someone holding them, I can always go and put some clothes on instead. I forgot that you’re not a snuggler.”  
  
 “Hrmph. Maybe I am a snuggler with _you,_ ” he said, and tightened his arm around her. If this was allowed, then he had no intention of letting her go.  
  
He did sleep, in the end. There was something deeply relaxing about the sound of her breath and the weight of her up against him. She was, when it came to it, a remarkably easy woman to fall asleep with.   
  
He woke to find they had both turned in the night. She was splayed out on her back, as she had a tendency to do in large beds, and he had curled around her on his side, one hand resting against her belly.   
  
He smiled to himself, drawing tangled patterns on her skin, until she wrinkled up her nose and made a quiet, irritated noise.  
  
That fear thrummed again, but he ignored it. It was wrong.   
  
The clock on her bedside table read 5:15. Another day she would be moving by now, but she seemed disinclined to rise.   
  
“It is morning, mistress.” He kissed her throat, and felt the blood pulse against his lips.   
  
“But I’m comfortable. And warm.”  
  
“You have somewhere to be,” he said, regretting every word even as he said it. “With Valentine.”  
  
She opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling, and sighed.   
  
“You _had_ to remind me of that. We could have stayed here all day.”  
  
“The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back. And I want to leave before the guards make things difficult.”  
  
She wrinkled her nose again.  
  
“Fine. I’m up, I’m up.”  
  
She sat up, the blankets falling away, and Charon almost turned before he remembered he could look at her now, this was _allowed_. There was not much to see in the dark, but when she rose and switched on her bedside light he let his eyes roam leisurely down her back, until he got to her hips and his throat went dry.   
  
She had _bruises_. Memories of grasping at her hips, fevered and needy, flashed through his mind. He had been a bit rough, yes, but he hadn’t realised…. There were so many of them, some pale, others dark blues and purples, here from his thumb, here from the heel of his hand as he’d pulled her to him, there a row from his fingers digging into her flesh.  
  
He pushed himself up and crawled across the bed to let his fingers hover over the marks, one for each bruise. “I — I did this?” He felt sick.  
  
She turned, and caught his hand, and he saw in the light the mark his mouth had left where her throat met her shoulder. He drew back, horrified.  
  
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.  
  
“I _hurt_ you.” Had the contract not responded? Maybe it _had_ done, and he’d been so caught up in his need for her that he just hadn’t felt it. He’d never been able to hurt an employer before, _never,_ even accidents were usually prevented by the contract’s lash of punishment.   
  
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said.  
  
“You have _bruises_. God, I — _fuck._ I didn’t — I didn’t mean —”   
  
She reached for him again and he darted back away from her, putting the bed between them. He was too big, he was too strong, he had hurt her without meaning to and that meant he could never touch her again. He turned away and grabbed for his clothing.   
  
“Charon, please.”   
  
He swallowed against the tightness in his throat as he pulled on his pants, his hands trembling.   
  
“I didn’t mean to, mistress, I’m sorry.”  
  
“I don’t understand. Charon — please — won’t you look at me?”  
  
He winced. She could have ordered him and she hadn’t, but with that tremor in her voice there was no way to refuse her.  
  
He turned, slowly, and saw her kneeling on the bed in front of him, looking smaller and more fragile than he’d seen her in a long time. His eyes caught on the dark bruise on the base of her throat and he took a step back.  
  
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked him.   
  
He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Can’t you see yourself? You’re covered in bruises. _I_ did that.”  
  
She rose slowly to her feet. Even standing on the bed, she was still not quite as tall as he was. She reached forward with one cautious hand, and rubbed her thumb against a spot on his collarbone that made him flinch.   
  
“You have bruises too, you great idiot,” she said softly. “You didn’t hurt me.” Her lips curled into a smile. “Trust me, I’ve had worse sex injuries than this. Rope burn, carpet burn, slipped during shower sex and broke my shoulder blade…”   
  
“Stop trying to make me smile.” He squeezed his hands into fists. “This isn’t _funny,_ this isn’t a game.”  
  
“Charon —”  
  
“I cannot touch you if this is what’s going to happen. The contract did nothing! What if I — what if —”  
  
“Hey.” She cupped his face in her hands, waited until he looked at her before she spoke. “You think it’s stopped working?” she asked him. “You think it can’t protect me any more?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he said.  
  
“Then test it. Even if it doesn’t work, I won’t mind a black eye if it means the contract’s losing it’s effectiveness.” She was smiling at him, her eyes a little sad. When he didn’t move, she reached down for his hands and brought them to her throat. “Here. It’s all right. You’ll know when to stop. I trust you.”  
  
His hands had always looked monstrous against her throat, and now they seemed worse, larger, more hideous. He traced a thumb along the top of her collarbone to the deep purple bruise he had given her, and swallowed. She would be fine. If the contract did nothing, he would stop. She trusted him with this, trusted him with her life in his hands, contract or no contract. She was willing to do this for him.   
  
He took a breath, and tightened his hands around her neck.  
  
The kickback was instantaneous. It had been a long, _long_ time since the contract had had to punish him for raising a hand to his employer. It was something he had always avoided without ever truly remembering why, and now the ancient lesson reinforced itself in white-hot, searing _agony_. His ears rang, and there was darkness at the edges of his vision. Charon stumbled through her living room, his nerves screaming, and managed to reach her kitchen sink before he started retching.   
  
“Well,” he heard her say as she followed him, “contract still in effect, then.”  
  
He nodded woozily. The pain was slowly beginning to fade, withdrawing nerve by nerve, and the ringing in his ears was subsiding, but the nausea and the dizziness appeared to be sticking around. He groaned.  
  
“On the one hand,” she said, wiggling into her underwear, “I’m kind of disappointed it’s not wearing off. On the other, well, at least you know for sure you didn’t hurt me.”  
  
He still wasn’t comfortable looking at those bruises. There was a soft dapple of them across one of her thighs, and one on her abdomen where he had grabbed her around the waist. It was the one on her neck that bothered him the most. He had kissed her there, caught her skin between his teeth, and felt as if he was worshipping her, adoring her. Instead he had harmed her. It was wrong to see blemishes on her perfect skin, and worse to know he’d put them there.   
  
She watched him as she buttoned her shirt.   
  
“If they bother you, I can use a stim,” she said. “It’s been a few hours, but it should fade some of the darker ones, at least.”  
  
Charon filled a glass with water, and rinsed the taste of bile out of his mouth.   
  
“They don’t bother _you?_ ” he said.  
  
She shrugged. “They’re a little tender, that’s all.” She pulled her trousers on and then stepped up close to him, her hand on his arm. “Are you all right? I didn’t think that it would be so…”  
  
“Neither did I,” he admitted.  
  
“That hasn’t happened before?” She raised an eyebrow in surprise, her hand dropping.   
  
“I do not remember it,” he said, and took her hand in both of his. “If I tried to harm an employer, if I thought about it, there would be push-back. I never got that far. It would stop me if I tried to touch them.” He hesitated, his eyes far away. “They must have trained this into me well. I don’t remember ever harming an employer while I was in their service.”  
  
“So this was a conditioned response.”  
  
“That is my guess,” he said, and shrugged. “It makes sense that my subconscious would avoid it. But I have never known how they —” he pulled his hands from hers, and thumped the heel of his palm against his head, “how they got that pain into me. Did they reprogram my brain? Is there some sort of… electronic…?”  
  
“I’ve always thought of it as magic,” she said, and ducked her head. “Silly, I know, but there’s enough other weird shit in the world now, and considering — uh…” She trailed off, and her eyes slipped away from him.   
  
“What?”  
  
“The… the materials. If it _is_ written with blood, why would they do that? Just for laughs? They wanted to set it in stone, they wanted every part of you tied into that thing. I can’t imagine it was _just_ out of some weird sense of tradition.” She shook her head.  
  
“Punishment. Just another way to toy with my head. If _you_ think it bound to me, why wouldn’t I?”  
  
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She snorted. “Makes more sense than rituals and magic pacts, anyway.”  
  
She stepped forward and slid her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest.  
  
“I’m sorry I suggested that,” she said. “It was very painful?”  
  
Charon grit his teeth, and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t upset her. There was nothing that was not a lie.  
  
“Yes,” he said at last.   
  
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m meant to be the one who _doesn’t_ hurt you.”  
  
He set his hands upon her waist and lifted her up so he could press a kiss against her cheek.   
  
“You are the one covered in bruises,” he reminded her as she wound her arms around his neck.  
  
“You’re very high off the ground,” she said.   
  
“I will not drop you.”  
  
“I know.” She rested her forehead against his, and closed her eyes. “You really think you need the contract to protect me from you?”  
  
“I know what I am capable of, smoothskin.”  
  
“You wouldn’t hurt me.”  
  
“ _Look_ at yourself. I hurt you already, without meaning to. If the contract was not there…”  
  
“Charon —”  
  
“You do not understand. I would not sleep beside you without the contract. I could have a nightmare and kill you in my sleep. I have no memory of living without the contract’s control. I have no idea what I might do without it. I am _dangerous,_ mistress, you must never forget that.”  
  
She opened her eyes and studied his face, her brows pinched together.  
  
“Are you afraid of me?”  
  
The question surprised him, and he pulled back a little to better see her face.  
  
“No.”  
  
“The contract protects you as well as me. I wouldn’t blame you.”  
  
“No, mistress. You have been good to me.”  
  
“And _you_ have been good to _me_. You have a mind of your own, Charon. What difference would it make, if the contract wasn’t there? It wouldn’t change who you were.”  
  
“It is _not the same,_ ” he said, his hands tightening on her automatically in a way that scared him, enough to untangle her arms from around his neck and set her back down on the ground. He turned away, and poured himself another glass of water. He could feel her eyes on his back.  
  
 “This is to do with things you can’t remember,” she said. “Who you are, what you did before all this.”  
  
“I… yes. In part. And the things I’ve done since. You saw what I did to those ferals.”  
  
“That was the contract. You said —”  
  
“Stop.” He set his glass down and turned back to her. “Smoothskin, I don’t know who I _am_ without the contract. I do not know how much of that — how much — The contract steers me, it doesn’t do those things itself, you understand? It tells me to protect, it tells me to kill. I do the killing.”  
  
She cocked her head to one side. “Hold on. Are you telling me you go berserk? Like a fucking _viking?_ ”  
  
“I don’t —”  
  
“Oh my _god,_ you’re six foot eight with red hair. You’re a fucking viking and I never noticed it.”  
  
The frustration was beginning to overwhelm him. She didn’t understand, and along with the shock of her bruises and the blow of the contract’s punishment… it was too much. She was looking up at him with a soft smile on her face like this was _nothing,_ like she wasn’t covered in reasons he shouldn't touch her, and he didn’t know how to get her to listen. He needed space. He needed quiet.  
  
He found himself moving, walking away from her, and he climbed the winding staircase, up past the landing with the bunk beds, and up the ladder that led onto her roof. It was dark enough that no guards would see him out there, and he wanted the quiet, the cool morning air. When he pushed open the trap door and climbed out he found himself in a small shack, with a sofa and a low table. Out on the roof, a small garden of plants stood black against the lights of Diamond City.  
  
Charon let out a shaky breath, and stepped back to sink down onto the sofa. He was still only half-dressed, and there was a chill in the air, but he stayed until his mind had stilled and he had some sense of reason again.   
  
She didn’t understand, and that upset him, but she was the employer and it was not her job to understand. She gave the orders, and he obeyed them. He was worried about what might happen without the contract, what he might do to her, and that was foolish. There would never be a _without the contract._ The contract would always be there. She would be safe from him. And those bruises… if he had hurt her, if she had wanted him to stop, she would have stopped him. She had _promised._ She still had control. She would always have control.  
  
He stood, but as he moved back to the trap door his eyes caught on something, sitting on a shelf next to a potted plant. A framed picture. He picked it up, wiping the glass with one hand, but he couldn’t see it properly in the dark. Pulling up the trap door, he tucked it under one arm and climbed back down the ladder. In the light, he looked at it again, and a lump formed in his throat.  
  
She was wearing a blue dress, long and simple, a baby bundled in her arms and, standing beside her with an arm around her waist, a man who was far too familiar. It was almost disturbing to see him alive, his eyes open, his face full of joy. A soldier back from the war, with a beautiful, brave, intelligent wife, and a new son. Of course he was happy. He had had everything. So briefly.  
  
And _her_ face… she looked so different without the scar. Like a different person. A woman with a baby and a career in a world that hadn’t ended yet. Even her hair was different. Tamed. She looked like one of the women on the billboards. A woman from before the war. And yet somehow… unfinished. Not who she was meant to be.  
  
Charon left the photograph on her desk as he passed, and descended the stairs to her kitchen. She had made coffee, and when she saw him she rose from her diner booth, a mug in each hand.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing one of them to him. “I was being flippant.”  
  
He paused, then took her mug from her, and set them both on the table. When she looked up at him, curious, he cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb tracing along the edge of her scar. He bent, and hesitated for half a heartbeat before he kissed her.  
  
“All I want is for you to be safe,” he said.  
  
“I know. And I go and throw myself into dangerous situations and make the contract cause you grief.”  
  
He shook his head. “I am not talking about the contract. If I were _dead,_ all I would want is for you to be safe. You understand me, smoothskin?”  
  
She nodded, and reached up to cradle his hand against her cheek.   
  
“You keep me safe,” she reminded him.  
  
Charon sighed. “I know.”  
  
“I’m not going to stop trusting you to do that because of a few bruises. I mean, I know it’s not really about the bruises… But if you had hurt me, Charon, I would have said something. Okay? I can always tell you to stop.”  
  
“What if…” He rubbed her cheek with his thumb. “What if I do not stop? If I am _berserk,_ and I cannot stop?”  
  
“That won’t happen. Not with me. You know that. The contract will stop you, either with the order or with whatever it was it did to you earlier. We are safe together, Charon. Okay?”  
  
He exhaled, and nodded.  
  
“Come on.” She tugged at his hand. “Let’s drink this coffee before it goes cold. And then we have to get you out of here before the city wakes up.”  
  
She led him through the city, not to the gates this time, but through the streets. A guard caught his eye, and then looked away, and spat.   
  
“You were right,” Charon said to her as he followed her down an alleyway. “You look better with the scar.”  
  
She looked up at him in surprise, and a strange contentment settled over her face. “You found my picture.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“That was taken like three weeks before the bombs. Codsworth saved it for me.”  
  
“You do not look like yourself.”  
  
She shrugged. “My life was very different then.”  
  
“Better.”  
  
“No, not better. Just different.”  
  
He saw the blinking neon heart of a sign, _Valentine’s,_ and hesitated. In a few moments they would part ways, and he had been thinking of contracts and dead husbands. They hadn’t spent much time apart in the months he’d known her. The time he’d taken Kent to Goodneighbor, against his wishes… the time she’d gone off to shower at the Cabots’ place, and left him behind. That was all. No more than a couple of hours each time.   
  
He didn’t like the idea of her walking into potential danger without him.   
  
“What is it you are doing with him, again?” he asked.  
  
“It’s just something we have to sort out,” she told him. “Old business. Nick’s business. Nothing to be concerned about.”  
  
He nodded, and tried to smother the spark of anxiety. She did not need him with her.   
  
She rapped on the agency door, and after a second or two it opened, and Valentine stepped into the lane.  
  
“Morning, Dollface. You ready to do this?” His glowing yellow eyes slid over to Charon’s face, and he gave him a nod. “Charon. Are you, uh…”  
  
“He can’t stay here,” Sloan pointed out. “He’s heading to Goodneighbor. Just me and you, Nick.”  
  
The synth looked relieved. “Then let’s go. I want to get this over with. It’s been far too long coming.”  
  
There was a tension in the air Charon didn’t understand. He didn’t know what they were doing, or why, only that Valentine clearly hadn’t wanted him to come along and Sloan was sufficiently aware of that to make sure he wouldn’t. But if it was nothing to be concerned about, why were they so tense?  
  
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. She’d be back soon and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.   
  
They paused together in the square outside of Diamond City’s gates. Sloan and Valentine would be heading south, and he was heading east. It seemed sudden, and he wished belatedly that he’d taken a moment in her house to really say goodbye.  
  
 _You will see her again soon,_ he reminded himself. _It’s not like you cannot survive a day or two without her._  
  
She was bouncing on her toes, as if impatient to be moving.   
  
“Charon, go to Goodneighbor,” she said. “You know the way. You can leave in an emergency, if you have to. Otherwise, stay there, and wait for me.”  
  
He nodded. The emergency clause was something he hadn’t expected, but it was smart. If the whole place burned down he’d have been stuck there.   
  
“Be good,” he said to her, and she smiled.   
  
It was utterly alien to leave her behind. He turned every few steps and saw her watching, until he rounded a corner and she was gone.   
  
  


 


	42. Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon's super bad at this whole "waiting" malarkey.

It was boring without her. At least, for the first day.  
  
He cleaned his guns. Then he went to the shop run by the robot, and looked at _her_ guns until she started to threaten him if he didn’t leave her stock alone. Finally he went to Daisy, and asked, cringing internally at himself, whether he could borrow a book.  
  
Daisy’s eyes sparkled.  
  
“Sure you can, fella. Let me find you something you’ll like… Oh! Here we are.” She slid a hardcover across the counter, and grinned at him. “Not used to down-time, huh?”  
  
“I am not.” He opened the book, and his forehead furrowed as he saw the title page. “ _Pride and Prejudice_? This is a book for women.”  
  
Daisy chuckled at him. “What, just because it’s got a bit of romance in it, it’s a girl’s book? It’s an absorbing read. Plus, there’s all that unresolved sexual tension.” She grinned at him. “Bet you know all about _that,_ huh? You and your vault-dweller.”  
  
He glowered at her, and she laughed again.  
  
“Oh, fine. Here. _The Count of Monte Cristo_. A rollicking adventure novel about betrayal and revenge. Right up your street. Mind you bring it back! It belongs to the library.”  
  
He took them both, at her insistence. Once back in his room he flopped down onto the bed and opened the adventure novel. To begin with it was hard to focus; his attention kept slipping away, and he would come back to himself to realise he had skimmed a page or two with no memory of what they said. In time, however, he became entranced. It kept him occupied until he noticed the time passing, and concern started to nibble at his mind. Night had come and gone, and she was not yet back. It had been more than a day. She should be back.   
  
He read a little more, but it was hard to concentrate, with a part of his mind worrying whether or not she was okay out there without him. He tried to sleep, but when it finally found him she visited his nightmares. She stood before him, her throat hanging open, hollow, like the synth Valentine. Her artery pulsed in her neck. She put his hands around her throat and told him to squeeze, and he did, crushing her until the artery burst and her blood poured out over his hands. He woke drenched in sweat with his heart in his mouth, and didn’t dare sleep again.   
  
On the morning of the third day, he knew something must have happened.   
  
He went to Hancock, hands clenching and unclenching.   
  
“It has been three days,” he said, as Hancock lit a cigarette and shook out his match. “She should be back by now.”  
  
“Sunshine runs on her own schedule,” Hancock said, waving a dismissive hand. “She’ll be back.”  
  
“She would not leave me here,” Charon insisted. “I cannot protect her if I am not with her. She would have at least _told_ me.”  
  
Hancock huffed a sigh, but nevertheless he mused this over, studying his face.   
  
“Look,” he said, “I‘m telling you, she’s fine. She’s left _me_ behind for _way_ longer than this. _Me._ ”   
  
Charon frowned at him. “Our situations are not similar.”  
  
“I mean, why she’d want to be without me for weeks is one of them unanswerable questions.” He paused, looking contemplatively into space. “I guess it’s like when you stay off your favourite drug for a while, just so the next time you take it you get something a bit closer to that first time high.”  
  
Charon grit his teeth. “Hancock.”   
  
He rolled his eyes. “Look, if this is really bothering you, I’ll look into it.”  
  
He exhaled, a little tension easing from his muscles. “Look into it?”  
  
He nodded. “First we check with Nick. He’ll know where she is, and if he ain’t where he should be, that’s a different problem.”  
  
“How are we going to get into Diamond City without her?”  
  
“Won’t need to. I’ll send agents.”   
  
Charon was surprised. “You have _agents?_ ”  
  
“’Course I have agents. Hard to get stuff done without ‘em.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “If shit’s gone sideways, I’ll arrange for Nick to meet us halfway at Trinity Plaza. That is, if he doesn’t come running straight over. Just sit tight till we hear back.”  
  
“I am not good at sitting tight.”  
  
“I ain’t your babysitter, all right? Find something to do. Just don’t get so stoned that you can’t fight if you need to.” He eyed him. “You can leave, right? You ain’t forced to stay here?”  
  
“In an emergency. Not otherwise.” And she’d been right, damn her, to insist upon that. Had she known? Expected something to go wrong?  
  
“Hey.” Hancock stepped forward to rest a hand on his arm, and he stiffened. “She’ll be fine.”  
  
“You feel better, telling yourself that?”  
  
“Yeah, actually.” Hancock narrowed his eyes. “Look, we’re on the same side here, Ferryman.”  
  
He growled at the back of his throat. “I know.”  
  
“Go clean your guns. I’ll find you when I know something.”  
  
His guns were already clean. He could not sleep, he could not concentrate to read. He had no _knowledge_ that she was in danger, but the distance between them and his own anxiety were feeding into the contract all the same, and there was a light conflict between the orders in his brain that bothered him on top of everything else.   
  
The sun had long set when there was a knock at the door.  
  
Fahrenheit stood in the hallway, and leant forward with one hand on the door frame. There were two men behind her, with guns, and Charon immediately bristled.  
  
“Mayor wants you,” she said, and jerked her head down the hallway. “He says all your moping around is harshing his buzz.”  
  
Charon scowled.   
  
“Can that man not be serious about anything?”  
  
“Sure I don’t know. Move your ass.”   
  
Charon seethed, but he nodded, grabbing his shotgun off the dresser as he passed. Fahrenheit walked a half-step behind him, out across the road and into the Old State House. Once inside, she followed him up the stairs and ushered him into the room, closing the doors behind him.   
  
Hancock was perched on the arm of the couch, lighting a cigarette, and when he came in he gave him a glassy-eyed grin that suggested he’d been huffing too much jet.   
  
Charon frowned. “Did you —”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and waved a hand. “Ellie says they left a few days ago and she don’t expect him back any time specific. They went to follow up on some kind of unfinished business of his and she figured it might take a while. She ain’t worried. All right?”   
  
“That’s all?”  
  
“That’s all. And before you ask, no, I ain’t worried neither. If anyone can take care of herself, it’s Sloan. _And_ she has Nick with her, and he ain’t a slouch. So _relax._ Enjoy yourself. Go get drunk or flirt with Magnolia or somethin’.”  
  
“I cannot relax.”  
  
“If you say one word to me about that fucking contract I’m kicking your ass.”   
  
Charon sneered at him. “You can try. I am stronger and tougher than you are.”  
  
“And I’m quicker’n you. I got so much jet in me right now I can practically see the future. So unless you want a knife in your gut, _back the fuck off._ ”  
  
Charon took a half-step back, and gave him a bemused look.  
  
“You threatened _me,_ ” he reminded him.  
  
Hancock blinked, then waved a hand. “I know. Whatever. The point is, you gotta relax. So are you joining me for some chems or not?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“C’mon. It’ll keep your mind off’ve pining for she-who-must-be-obeyed.”  
  
“I am not _pining,_ ” he said.  
  
“If you say so. Sure you don’t want some jet?”  
  
Charon left him to his apparent attempts at seeing how much jet a person could ingest before suffering a stroke, and went back to the hotel. He picked up his book again but couldn’t make himself read. He wound up pacing the room all night between sets of push-ups, his mind wandering over fifteen different terrible things that could have happened.  
  
When the morning sun started shining through the slats in the boarded-up windows, he went out onto the street. Untethered, restless and bored, he paced the boundaries of Goodneighbor, examining the walls for weaknesses, wandering down the alleyways. He found a body down the end of one, some drifter killed for some reason or other, and wondered if the murderer had paid for it or if this was part of the price of Goodneighbor’s freedom.   
  
On his second rotation a thin young woman separated herself from a corner and started following him. He waited until he had pulled into a quiet alley before turning and snarling at her.  
  
She blinked up at him, nervous but unsurprised.   
  
“H-hey, brother. What’re you doing?”  
  
“Leave me alone,” he growled.   
  
She straightened, but she didn’t move away.  
  
“Why’re you so mad?”  
  
“Because —” he paused. “Do you know the vault-dweller?”  
  
She nodded, grinning, and leant forward a little. “She’s the Silver Shroud,” the girl whispered conspiratorially.  
  
“…Yes. I go with her, but not this time. This time I have to stay here.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, she may be in danger. I expected her to be back by now.”  
  
“She’s the _Silver Shroud_ ,” the girl repeated. “She is _tough_. She took down Sinjin, _and_ all his gang.””  
  
“I know. I do not like being left behind.”  
  
“I was left behind once. That’s why I’m here.”  
  
Charon paused, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Goodneighbor was the sort of place where every life was its own little tragedy, but this girl was pretty, she was _human,_ she could make a better life for herself than this.   
  
“You could go to Diamond City,” he said. “You should. It is safer, for smoothskins. Better.”  
  
She wrinkled her nose at his use of that slur, and shook her head.  
  
“Diamond City’s the place you run from. Goodneighbor’s the place you end up. Besides… all my friends are here.”   
  
She tilted her head to one side, and looked up at him. Straight in the face, as if he was anyone, as if he was human. It surprised him that he was almost used to that now.   
  
“So what’re you doing?” she asked him.  
  
Charon huffed a sigh. “Looking around.”  
  
“You want a tour?”  
  
He paused. Was this a euphemism? The woman at Oberland Station had offered Hancock a ‘tour’.   
  
“How old are you?” he growled.  
  
The girl lifted her chin. “Old enough.”  
  
“What exactly are you offering?”  
  
She blushed prettily, and looked down at her shoes.   
  
“Well… It’s just I know some quiet spots…”  
  
He sighed. “Kid, smoothskin girls shouldn’t go offering that sort of thing to ghouls. You’ll get yourself into trouble.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Some of us are _old._ And we don’t get offers like that every day. You understand? Someone will hurt you. They will take more than you are willing to give.”  
  
“You think I’d make offers to guys the size of you if I didn’t like it rough?”  
  
He stared at her, and she snickered to herself.  
  
“We all just want that personal connection, right? The human touch, or ghoul touch, I guess. Even if it’s just for a little while. Can’t survive just on chems and alcohol. If you don’t connect with someone physically once in a while you’ll go crazy.”  
  
Charon growled. “Go connect with someone else.”  
  
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Okay. If you change your mind, I’ll be around.”  
  
Charon slunk to the back of the alley, and perched himself on the lid of the dumpster. He was supremely unused to being propositioned and he didn’t know how he should feel about it. Flattered? A month ago he might even have considered it — how often did he get that kind of offer? The mistress wouldn’t mind, even now. She would probably be in _favour_ of it. And yet it was unpleasant even to think about.  
  
Four nights ago he had held her, loved her, and now she was _missing._ The idea of touching someone _else_ while she was out there in the ruins, potentially hurt, was total anathema to him. And the thought that that one night might have been all he’d have with her… god. It was unbearable. All that time he had fucking _wasted_ because he couldn’t work out what he wanted, because he was too afraid to want anything at all.  
  
And how could Hancock just choose not to worry? What he had with her was rare as hell. If she died, he would never find that sort of thing again. Humans might sleep with him but it was one thing to spend an illicit night with a ghoul and another to openly love one. He must know that.   
  
Charon’s breath caught in his throat.   
  
He hadn’t told her he loved her. He’d let her go off and hadn’t told her he loved her. He hadn’t told her he loved her and now she was _missing_ and she might never know.  
  
But that… maybe that was better. Better for her, even if it made him feel like he was rotting from the inside.   
  
He exhaled a shaking breath, and made his way back to the hotel.  
  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Charon would quite like Pride and Prejudice if he gave it a chance. Having said that, Daisy is 100% taking the piss. I also like the idea that she's been low-key shipping them this whole time.
> 
> After some of your thoughts on the last chapter I looked at this one with fresh eyes and now I'm a bit worried you're all going to be massively disappointed at how quickly this subplot is resolved but never mind!


	43. Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interpersonal conflict

She waltzed into their room on the evening of the eighth day, for all the world like nothing had happened.   
  
She was in one piece, unharmed, not the least bit rumpled or rattled for being over a week without him. Like she hadn’t noticed he wasn’t there. Charon stared at her like an apparition, and the brief moment of relief he felt was overwhelmed by the utter _rage_ that she would just walk in and smile at him like she hadn’t been _missing_ for eight days, like he hadn’t been stuck here wondering where she had gone and if she was hurt. He wanted to shake her and it only made him angrier to know he couldn’t.  
  
“Where have you _been?_ ” he demanded.  
  
She blinked at him, and then rolled her eyes. “Oh, god, we’re doing this again.”  
  
“ _Eight days,_ ” he snarled at her. “You left me here for _eight days.”_  
  
“I told you, me and Nick —”  
  
“You _told_ me you had something to sort out. That thing took _eight days?”_  
  
“You said you’d be fine! You said the contract wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t know I was in danger.”  
  
“ _Fuck_ the contract!” Charon took a deep breath, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “This is _not_ about the contract! This — you leave me here in this shit-hole thinking you will be a day or two and now you are _snarking_ at me for wanting to know what the fuck you’ve been _doing_ for _eight fucking days?_ ”  
  
She took a step back, the surprise on her face quickly overtaken by anger.  
  
“Hey, fuck you, Charon! You’re not my husband, you’re not my father, you’re not my commanding officer! You don’t get to dictate where I go or who I go with.”  
  
“No,” he admitted, “but —”  
  
“Yeah, it took eight fucking days, all right?” Her mouth twisted, showing her teeth. “Nick had some shit he had to work through, and I wanted to be there. So fuck you. I’m sorry your situation means waiting for me is a chore, and I’m sorry you can’t just roam wherever and do what you want. That sucks for you, and I don’t know how to fix that. But you can’t sit there and pretend I did you some massive wrong for leaving you behind for a few days while I spent some time with a friend of mine.”  
  
Charon swallowed. They had fought before, but she hadn’t been anywhere _near_ this angry. He had made a tremendous error.  
  
Two hundred years of experience said _employer unhappy, punishment imminent_ and a deep, ancient part of him desperately wanted to walk this back. Something in the back of his mind was screaming _danger_ and he tried to quell it, to fight it. He _wanted_ to still be angry. He was the one in the right here, she shouldn’t have left him for so long. She should at least have _told_ him so he wasn’t worried about her. He wanted to yell at her some more, to make her feel some of what _he_ had felt, sitting here helpless to do anything but wait. But he had pissed her off, and his own ire was slipping away moment by moment, replaced by a fear so old he couldn’t remember its origin.  
  
“I thought something had _happened_ to you,” he said, the anger bleeding out of his voice. “I thought — you could have been captured by raiders or dying in a ditch somewhere.”  
  
He could feel himself starting to shake and he didn’t want that. He was better than this, stronger than this. And the mistress, well, she was different, she was kind and good and she wouldn’t… he _knew_ she wouldn’t… Fucking hell, what had made him think it was a good idea to be _angry_ at her? To yell? When had arguing with an employer _ever_ turned out well?   
  
“What do I have to do to convince you I can look after myself? You want me to be with you constantly?” She threw out a hand. “You don’t own me. Not every moment of my existence belongs to you. You more than anyone — Charon, I give you _all_ the space I possibly can. All the time, all the freedom. Don’t I get any for myself? You are _always_ with me. You follow me all over the Commonwealth, you see every part of my life, you watch me while I sleep. Eight fucking days hanging with someone else instead and you act like it’s the end of the world. Didn’t any of your other employers ever leave you somewhere for a while?”  
  
He flinched. “Don’t ask me about — don’t ask me about them.”  
  
He should have done this differently. He should have been _happy_ when she walked through the door. He should have swept her up into a hug and kissed her cheek and told her how glad he was that she was alive.   
  
“Fuck you. You can’t tell me eight days is the longest you’ve spent away from an employer. Did you fight like this with anyone else? Did you yell at them as soon as they stepped through the door? I bet you fucking didn’t.”  
  
“Of course I didn’t.” His shoulders were hunched now, his head down; he was folding into himself. Shame, fear, dread. The past was not somewhere he ever liked to go. “Mistress. Please. Do not ask me about them.”  
  
Her eyes were still dark and flashing with rage and he fought desperately against the need to become small, to hide. He trusted her, he did, but she was _furious_ and he had been a slave for too long. And if she asked, he would have to tell her. The memories were already lurking at the edges of his mind, and he took a breath against the tightness in his chest.  
  
“You said you had to play bouncer at a bar for _thirty years,_ ” she said. “Thirty years of fuck all! I give you eight days off and it’s a travesty! Come on, Charon, tell me. What’s the longest time you’ve been left behind?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he said, falling to his knees. He could remember, could remember too well, but with no way to tell time, the days had bled together. “I don’t know. I don’t — it was dark, mistress, it was dark, I do not know how long — months, years — there was —” he took a shuddering breath, “he left me radiation, a barrel of nuclear waste — it was dark, there was no food — I do not know how long — mistress, please —”  
  
He flinched away from her as she drew close, squeezing his eyes shut. She laid her hand on his cheek, her fingers cold through the leather of her glove.  
  
“My poor darling,” she said.   
  
“Please.”   
  
“I’m so sorry, Charon. I’m so sorry. My sweet broken thing.”   
  
She sank down to her knees in front of him, and reached forward to wind her arms around his neck. He knew he was shaking and couldn’t stop it, could barely hold it together enough to keep his breath steady. Haltingly, he put his arms around her, so small compared to how large she loomed in his mind. He tightened his grip, burying his face into her shoulder, her neck against his cheek.  
  
“I’m sorry I yelled,” she said. “I’m sorry I made you think about… about that. That was so thoughtless of me. We’ll figure out a way for this to work, okay? Sometimes I need some time for me. Or some time with a friend. But we’ll figure something out.”  
  
“I did not know you would be more than a day or two,” he said. “I expected to hear from you… I overreacted.” He exhaled a shaky breath against the warm skin of her neck. “I am so stupid, mistress. So stupid. Forgive me.”  
  
“It’s okay, Charon, it’s okay. I should have… I don’t know. You’re not stupid, honey.” She eased back onto her heels, and cupped his cheeks in her hands for just a moment. “Come on. Come sit next to me and I’ll explain.”  
  
She pushed herself to her feet and dropped down onto the bed, and Charon pulled himself up next to her.  
  
“So.” She let out a long breath, and rubbed her palms together. “So Nick has memories from someone else. Someone before the war. That’s who he thought he was, for a while. As far as he knew, one moment he was Detective Nick Valentine, Boston, in the year 2077… the next moment he’s a robot in a trash heap and the world had ended.”  
  
“Like you.” His hands were still shaking, and he balled them into fists to still them.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, in some ways. At least I knew about the bombs. It must have been… anyway. The man whose memories he has, he had some… some unfinished business, I guess. With this guy who’d turned himself into a ghoul. He’d been alive all this time. Nick finally found out where he’d been hiding. With the last of those tapes, we had the code to open the door. So we went and we killed him. And before you ask, no, that part didn’t take eight days. We hung out for a while. Talked, walked, you know. Let shit process. We got out of the city for a few days. It… it was hard on Nick. You understand?” She knocked her knee against his. “I was never in any danger. A few raiders here and there, that’s all.”  
  
“I thought you would be gone a day, perhaps two.” He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I went to Hancock. I demanded he do something. He sent someone to ask that woman who works for Valentine where you’d gone, but it bothered me that he wasn’t worried.”  
  
“Hancock knows I get ideas in my head sometimes, that I change my plans. I tend not to give anyone any ETAs or anything in case I get distracted and turn up three weeks later. You’ve seen me do that plenty.”   
  
“I know. I, I thought… that you’d come for me.”  
  
“I did. I’m here.” She spread her palms. “I guess I should have checked in earlier, but I figured you were fine here, and we needed some space away from the city. Nick needed some space. You understand?”  
  
“Yes.” He looked over at her, her forehead lined with what might be concern, or might be irritation. “Are you angry with me?”  
  
“I was. Not any more.”  
  
“Can I hug you again?”  
  
She huffed a laugh, and snuggled against his side. “You don’t need to ask, doofus.”  
  
He put an arm around her, and pulled her closer, leaning over a little to rest his chin against her hair.   
  
“I should ask permission,” he said.  
  
“There’s no reason you should. We’re — I mean, we have an understanding.” She went quiet, her hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt. “Before, when I yelled… There was a moment I talked to you like I was just anyone. Like any employer. I shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong. We’re more than that.” She tightened her arm around his waist. “I’m sorry. You’re allowed to hug me, Charon. Whenever you want.”  
  
“It was stupid of me to be angry with you. You do not have to apologise.”  
  
“Yes, I do. I was angry too but that’s no excuse for speaking to you like that.”  
  
“You are not like the others,” he told her. “No one else would have thought they needed an _excuse_ for anything. You have the right to speak to me however you please.”  
  
“No, Charon. I don’t. I really don’t.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Someone really shut you in a room?” she said after a while.  
  
“Yes. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did, I… I must have done something.”  
  
“Was he the worst one?”  
  
“No. There was one who… he was a scientist. He liked to… experiment.”  
  
He felt her shudder, and then go still, and he ducked his head to see her face.  
  
“Mistress?”  
  
“I cut you,” she said, in a tight voice. “I… I cut you, to get the bullet out.”  
  
“That was a _good_ thing.” He hesitated, and put a hand to her chin to tilt her face up. Her eyes were wide, her brows pinched together.  
  
“But it didn’t invalidate the contract.”  
  
“No. It was not violence.”  
  
“It _wasn’t violence?_ I _cut_ you. I fucking —” She broke off, shaking her head. “So what counts? It has to be intended to harm, not heal? What if it wasn’t intended to harm, but it still did? I _cut_ you, you _screamed._ What about —” She stopped, suddenly, her face closing off in a way that made his skin prickle.  
  
“…What?” he asked her.  
  
“No. Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”   
  
She stood up and moved away from him, went to get her pack. The absence of her was a sucking void, and he followed her, one arm half-raised in an unconscious desire to pull her back.  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
She turned, and there was a wariness in her eyes.   
  
“No. I don’t really want to know and I don’t want you to have to tell it. It’s not important, Charon, it’s just a thought I had.” She caught his outstretched hand, and squeezed it briefly before she let it go.  
  
“Tell me,” he said again, driven by the need to know.  
  
“No. I’ve pushed you too far on this as it is. So fucking _thoughtless._ ” She raked her fingers back through her hair, and turned back to her pack. Her face was bleak. “One day I’ll say the wrong thing or we’ll come across some hideous monstrosity in a room somewhere that sets you off and I’ll lose you to a post-traumatic episode. There’s no reason to do that to you. I want you happy. If I can’t have you happy, I want you content. And if I can’t have that, I at least want you _functional_. I’m not sending you to trauma-town for shits and giggles.”  
  
“I am not _fragile,_ ” he insisted, but it felt like a lie as soon as it left his mouth. Not fragile? She’d seen him through panic attacks and night terrors. She knew damn well how fragile he was.  
  
She turned back, and studied him. “No,” she said eventually. “You’re not fragile. You’re what’s left behind when the bombs hit and the world crumbles. You survived. Maybe only out of spite, but there are worse reasons to keep living. Every one of your employers, you have left behind, one way or another. Some of them you killed yourself. Yes, maybe they broke you, but you healed. You healed, and you’re stronger for it. There is no part of you that is weak. But I’m not going to push you off a cliff just because I’m sure you’ll survive the fall.” She picked her pack up off the floor, and swung it onto one shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go have a drink. Or maybe some jet; something to shake the morbs off. Nick’s still here somewhere, and I haven’t said hello to Hancock yet.”  
  
Yes. He could use something to chase away the shadows, crowding in the corners of his mind.  
  
She led the way down the hall, and he followed.  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one of those arguments in which I don't think either of them were in the right. They each dealt with their anger very poorly.


	44. Tequila

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's a lot on your mind it's there to help you forget, to relax and rewind, and leave behind the regret.
> 
> Naturally, Charon's more the brooding type.

They found Hancock at the bar, and he greeted her the way Charon should have, swinging her up into an embrace and then dipping her backwards to place a possessive kiss on her lips.  
  
“ _See?_ ” he said, grinning at Charon. “My Sunshine always comes back.”  
  
“Leave him be, Lord Byron,” she said with a smile. “Here, I found you some more booze.”   
  
She pulled a few bottles out of her pack, stacking them on the bar, and Whitechapel Charlie picked them up one by one, tutting over the labels and slotting them into their places on the shelves behind.  
  
“You bring Nick with you?” Hancock asked, leaning on the bar.  
  
“Yeah, he’s around somewhere.”  
  
“Probably off flirting with Irma.”  
  
“I swear, that man is _such_ a tease.”  
  
“He still not put his money where his mouth is, Sunshine?” He grinned. “His loss.”  
  
The Mr. Handy cleared his non-existent throat. “What will sir be drinking today, then?” he asked, in a far more polite voice than Charon had ever heard him use before.  
  
“Surprise me,” Hancock said, waving a hand, but Sloan shook her head and reached into her pack a final time.  
  
“I found some _tequila,_ ” she said, brandishing the bottle.  
  
“You,” he said, “are my favourite girl.”  
  
She laughed, and Hancock beckoned to the robot.  
  
“Four shot glasses, Charlie,” he said, “and some salt.”  
  
“Some day I’ll find a substitute for lemons,” Sloan said, sashaying over to the drinks machine. “I guess for now nuka quantum will have to do. Can’t drink tequila shots without a chaser of _some_ kind.”  
  
“Says you.” Hancock led the way into the VIP room, taking a seat on the sofa and kicking up his boots on the low table. The Mr Handy followed with a tray of glasses, setting them on the table with the bottle of tequila and then zipping back off behind the bar. Hancock watched him go with a lazy grin, and then turned his attention to Charon.  
  
“Sit down, Ferryman. You can tell Sunshine how much you missed her.”  
  
“He has done already,” Sloan said, sitting down in the middle of the sofa and tugging Charon down next to her. “He yelled.”  
  
Hancock chuckled. “He yelled at me too. I think. I was pretty high at the time, I might have just imagined that.”  
  
“He threatened to stab me,” Charon grumbled, and she laughed.   
  
“He what? Why?”  
  
“He did not want to hear about our contract. He threatened me with violence, to which I responded that I am tougher than he is.”  
  
“Ah.” She nudged Hancock in the arm. “If you’re going to stab my bodyguard, just make sure you give him a stimpak afterwards.”  
  
“Deal.” He tipped a shot of tequila down his throat, and made a face. “All right, pass me the nuka.”  
  
“It’s good stuff, this tequila! Got a worm at the bottom and everything.” She lifted the tequila so that the lights shone through it, the worm visible at the bottom of the bottle. “They say if you eat the worm, you hallucinate. You ever had a tequila worm before?”  
  
“I ain’t ever _seen_ a tequila worm before.”   
  
“Then it’s your lucky day.”  
  
By the time Valentine materialised in the doorway they were halfway down the bottle, and Charon’s mind was starting to go to some dark places. She’d brought him down here to cheer him up, and he’d been content to let her, but the drink didn’t seem to be helping and he was beginning to feel isolated from the others, as if blocked by some invisible veil. Hancock seemed in good spirits, and Sloan was happy-drunk, dancing around the room and singing a song about tequila that didn’t seem to have many words.  
  
When she saw the synth she skipped over to him and threw her arms around his neck.   
  
“Hey there, Nicky-V! Dance with me?”  
  
He chuckled. “How much have you had to drink, popsicle?”  
  
“I’m not really clear on that. You want some tequila?”  
  
He looked as though he was about to turn her down, but then he hesitated, and shrugged.  
  
“Sure, why not?”  
  
He pulled up a chair, leaning on his knees as she poured him a shot and passed him the shaker of salt.   
  
Charon watched him curiously as he tipped the tequila down his throat. He could see his oesophagus moving through the holes in his grey skin. How could he drink? Did he eat? Did alcohol even have an effect on him? The way he grimaced at least suggested he had some manner of flavour detectors in his mouth.  
  
“Can you even get drunk?” he asked him.  
  
“Sure. Doesn’t seem to affect me as much as true organics, though.” He watched Sloan as she danced from one end of the room to the other. “…Probably for the best.”  
  
“You get done that thing you needed to get done?” Hancock asked him, pouring himself another shot of tequila.  
  
“We did,” he replied, lowering his gaze to the glass in his hands.   
  
“All good?”  
  
“…Yeah, in a sense.” He shifted on his chair. “Anyway, it’s done. That’s the important thing.”  
  
“Another drink for Valentine,” Sloan said, sweeping the glass from his mismatched hands and setting it on the table to fill it.   
  
“You’re not planning on getting me drunk, are you?”  
  
“Not _as such,_ ” she said with a grin, and Valentine shook his head.  
  
Hancock lowered his head towards the bottle as she sat it back down on the table.  
  
“I want that worm,” he said, eyeing it. “We gotta finish this shit tonight.”  
  
“You could always save it for another day,” she said, handing Valentine his glass.  
  
“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”   
  
She laughed. “I suppose it’s not really a tequila drinking session until you’re consumed with regret.”  
  
That sounded a lot more like the evening Charon had in mind. Maybe she’d really brought him here to wallow, not to cheer him up. He was already nursing regrets; he may as well add a few more.   
  
Sloan poured herself another shot, but Charon confiscated it, tipping it down his throat and setting the glass back down heavily on the table.  
  
“No more for you,” Charon scolded her.  
  
“Oh, you’re no fun.”  
  
“Smoothskin, you’re half my size. Stop trying to keep up.”   
  
She made a face, but she relented with a theatrical sigh.   
  
“Fine. You have a point,” she said, pouting.  
  
He leant back in his seat, letting his sense of bitter melancholy settle over him. He would be content to sit here, getting progressively more drunk, and watch her dance around like the strange little lunatic she was. He would rather she was happy. It disturbed his brooding less than it would if she was sad, and he felt that damnable urge to comfort her. He wanted nothing to do with comfort tonight.  
  
She was humming to herself, some song he didn’t know, her hips swaying as she wandered the length of the room. Her fingers were trailing along the wallpaper, and she stopped at a female mannequin, standing on her toes to study its dead lips.  
  
“Is Magnolia singing tonight?” she asked.  
  
“Nah. It’s her night off.” Hancock swallowed the last of the nuka quantum, and set the bottle lengthways on the table, spinning it absently in a circle.  
  
“I’m going to go look at the juke box, then,” she announced. “I need some music that isn’t just in my head.”  
  
“Bring another bottle of nuka back with ya, huh Sunshine?”  
  
“Wilco.”  
  
She tottered out down the hall, and Charon turned his attention to Hancock, holding up the bottle of tequila to better examine the worm at the bottom.  
  
“You think that’s a real worm?” Hancock wondered aloud.  
  
“Oh, it’s real,” Valentine told him with a strange sort of smile. “I remember that brand. They were pretty hard to find in Massachusetts, even before the war. Winters must have been saving it for a special occasion.” His voice had turned bitter, and he pushed himself off his chair to take the bottle from Hancock and pour himself another shot.  
  
“Then it’s our lucky night, huh?” Hancock said with a grin.  
  
He settled back, sprawled out on the far end of the couch, toying with a knife between his fingers. Far too fucking devil-may-care. Too relaxed. How had he _known_ Sloan would come back? After they’d spoken at the Slog, Charon was well aware that he wasn’t a fool, or a person who lived a life free from doubt or regret. Yet on _this,_ he was annoyingly laid-back.  
  
“Explain to me,” Charon said to him, “how it is that she can disappear on you for _weeks_ and you can just choose not to worry. You _love_ her.”  
  
Hancock scowled at him like he’d made some sort of accusation.   
  
“Well jeez, was I _that_ obvious?” he drawled, rolling his eyes. “So what? So do you.”  
  
Charon jolted.  
  
“What?”  
  
“C’mon, I’m _drunk,_ I’m not blind.” He waved a hand. “It’s fine. She’s easy to love. You want my blessing or something? Fine, whatever.”  
  
Charon tried to marshal himself. Whatever he’d been planning to say had evaporated, and he grasped for words.   
  
“No, I — I don’t — I mean —”  
  
“Settle down. I haven’t told her.” He unscrewed the lid of the bottle, and poured himself another glass of tequila. “Seriously though, you ain’t subtle. You might wanna work on that.”   
  
Charon tried to work out why he’d started this line of conversation in the first place.  
  
“But you… You don’t _worry._ She goes away, and often even _she_ doesn’t know where she is going. But you have faith that she will come back.” He spread his hands. “That is foolish.”  
  
“It ain’t foolish. She’s the toughest girl I know. You’ve seen her fight.”  
  
“I have seen her almost get killed by a deathclaw. She isn’t _immortal,_ ” he said. “One day she will die. One day she will leave you here, and she will not come back.”  
  
He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. Taking his angst out on Hancock was stupid and unkind, and he cursed himself. He avoided his eyes, staring down at the empty shot glasses on the table.  
  
Hancock made a growling sound at the back of his throat, and spat out a curse.  
  
“I _know_ that," he said. "But we’ll deal with that when it happens. I mean, what can I do? Can’t go with her all the time. Can’t make her stay here. What the fuck do you want from me, Ferryman?”  
  
“I just — I don’t understand what it is you do to keep from worrying. Drug yourself into oblivion?”  
  
He made a scoffing sound. “No. I got shit to do, can’t spent _all_ my time high. Look, no use worrying about something like that before it happens. What’s the point? Shit like that’ll drown ya, and not that you asked, but I’m fucking neck deep as it is, all right?” He held out the bottle of tequila, and shook it at him. “Now. Either get out, or have another fucking drink, brother.”  
  
Charon exhaled, and took the bottle.  
  
“I apologise,” He poured himself another drink, and set the bottle back on the table. “I shouldn’t have said that.”  
  
“Hey, I get it. You ain’t used to sitting and waiting. Shit gets in your head. Next time, find something to _do._ ”  
  
“Understood.”  
  
Valentine cleared his throat, and smirked at them from under his hat. “Not sure if you fellas noticed, but I was with her. I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her.”   
  
“I know, Nick,” Hancock muttered, in a voice that suggested they’d made their peace over this long ago. “I always tell you to take good care of her, and you always do. Minus a few scratches.”  
  
He made an amused sound, his grey lips twisting. “Not that she needs the help. Usually she’s the one looking out for _me._ ”  
  
Sloan came waltzing back into the VIP room, a pout on her face, and collapsed into a chair at the far end of the room with a bottle of nuka quantum dangling from her fingers. She didn’t appear to notice that the atmosphere had turned sour.  
  
“No music,” she declared. “Nothing I’m in the mood for, anyway.”  
  
“Well, what _are_ you in the mood for?” Hancock asked her.  
  
“I dunno. Something House-of-the-Rising-Sun-y.”  
  
“Don’t know that one.”  
  
“No? It was an old folk song. A few rock bands did some versions of it.”  
  
“You sing it,” Charon said.  
  
“Yeah, dazzle us, Sunshine.” Hancock smiled at her. “Been a while since you gave me a show.”  
  
She smirked at him, and rose to her feet. There was a smoky, almost husky quality to her voice, and the song itself almost seemed as if she had picked it to appeal to Charon’s state of mind. Dark, bitter, regretful.  
  
 _“There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun… It’s been the ruin of many a poor soul, and god, I know I’m one…”_  
  
“My sorta place,” Hancock said, reaching out for her hand. She took it, and set the bottle down on the table.  
  
 _“My mother was a tailor… She sewed my new bluejeans…”_ She settled on the arm of the sofa, draping herself over Hancock’s shoulder. _“My sweetheart was a gambling man, down in New Orleans. Now the only thing a gambler needs, is a suitcase and a trunk… And the only time he’s satisfied is when he’s on his drug.”_  
  
“Did anyone ever work out what that place was?” Valentine asked. He lit a cigarette, and shook out the match. “Seem to recall wondering about it. Whether it was a metaphor for something.”  
  
“I always figured it was a casino. My brother thought it was a cat-house, but Nate used to say it was a jail. It’s the ball and chain line that sold it for him.”   
  
Sloan slid off the couch to pour him another drink, and started singing again.   
  
_“I’ve got one foot on the platform, the other’s on the train, I’m going back to New Orleans, to wear that ball and chain. Oh mother, tell your children, not to do what I have done, but to shun that house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun.”_  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like, since this chapter is also kinda depressing and conflict-y, that I should say that they're gonna be just fine.


	45. Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clearing the air

Charon woke in a haze of last-night’s alcohol with a mouthful of cotton wool. He groaned, pushing himself off the bed, and staggered across the room to grab a carton of dirty water from the dresser.  
  
The shadows had chased him from the Third Rail before the tequila had been finished. He couldn’t stay there, with the light and the laughter and Sloan dragging Hancock from the couch to dance with her. He’d fled to the Rexford, left a handful of caps on the counter, and made off with a bottle of rotgut from the hotel bar. It tasted like battery acid, but there had been enough nameless hatred in him that night that he didn’t care.   
  
He drained the carton of water and tossed it into the trash. Sloan had not reappeared, which was no surprise. He was not sure what he would have done if she had. Yelled at her again, maybe. Chased her out. He’d wanted solitude to pick over his own entrails.  
  
He cornered Fred Allen downstairs, and haggled a bufftat out of him. Not perfect, but as good a hangover cure as the wasteland had yet devised.   
  
He found Valentine outside in the street, smoking a cigarette and watching a handful of scrawny children play hopscotch.   
  
“Hey, fella,” the synth greeted him.   
  
“Let me guess. Synths do not get hangovers.”  
  
He smirked. “Not in my experience, but then, I don’t often make it my business to test that out.”  
  
“Did Hancock eat the worm?”  
  
“He did. Not sure whether it was worth drinking that much tequila, but he spent a good quarter of an hour trying to catch non-existent butterflies, so it could have been worse.” He dropped his cigarette, and crushed it underfoot. “One day he’s going to take something he won’t have the chance to regret.”  
  
Charon studied his face. “You disapprove.”  
  
“Eh, he’s a good kid. I might not always agree with his methods, but his heart’s in the right place. And he’s built a good town here. I just wish he’d take it easy on the chems.”  
  
“You knew him, before he came here.”  
  
Valentine nodded solemnly. “I have my own regrets about the way Diamond City treated the ghouls. Not much I could do about it… Even now I tend to keep my head down from time to time. They’re mostly used to me, but there are still a few people there who lump me in with the Institute. Back then they hadn’t long decided I was worth keeping around.”   
  
“You were afraid.”  
  
“Yeah.” He watched the children playing with a frown. “Still. It wasn’t right. Hancock held that against me for… quite a while.”  
  
Charon was struck by the urge to get drunk again. Sometimes the world was a fucking bastard.  
  
Nothing heightened a dark emotional state like the lingering effects of last night’s alcohol, and he could recognise that in himself. The instinct to drink more to kill the darkness was not a good one, and going back to the bottle would only make it worse in the end. He had watched the descent of enough drunks to know he didn’t want his fucking demons to drag him along the road to alcoholism. No. He could afford no crutches.   
  
There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and he spat.  
  
“I’m going back inside,” he grumbled. “If she turns up, tell her where I am.”  
  
He climbed the stairs to their room with a scowl on his face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see Sloan at all. Not yet. Their fight the night before had been painful, and in his haze of bitter drunkenness he’d hated her a little. All his anger at being left behind had returned, black and oily in his gut, and he had brooded over the cruel way she had taunted him. That was unfair; she’d spoken in anger, and she had apologised when she’d realised what she’d said and how she’d said it. He knew she hadn’t meant to hurt him, knew that this would haunt her. They’d both made mistakes. He didn’t want her to feel guilt over this.  
  
All the same, their argument had stirred up the shit in his head, old thoughts and memories he didn’t want, and a part of him still blamed her for it. She should have known better. If she stayed away, he could keep bleeding over it, keep nursing that raw, black feeling in his chest. As soon as he saw her again that would be over. He would forgive her, instantly, and then it would _hurt_. As long as he stewed in his resentment, he wasn’t hurting. At least, not in the same way.  
  
It was an hour before she surfaced. He could hear her make her way along the hallway, singing to herself, and wondered whether any of the other tenants had ever had to put their heads out into the hall and yell at her. Maybe they didn’t have the nerve.   
  
She slipped in through the door, humming as she closed it behind her and hopping a little as she pulled off first one boot, then the other.  
  
“I thought you’d be sleeping,” she said, clambering onto the bed beside him.  
  
“No.” He was lying with his hands behind his head, staring up at the stains on the ceiling. “I slept some. But I woke a while ago.”  
  
“Are you still angry with me? You seemed… not happy, when you left the bar.”  
  
He had been angry, of course he had been, but now she was here, and he couldn’t stay angry any more. He sighed, and pushed himself up to look at her.  
  
“I was only angry with you because you scared me,” he told her. “I worried that you would not come back.” He swallowed, and looked away. He could feel his bitterness draining away, and wanted to cling to it, just for a moment more. “I do not like fighting with you. I remembered things I did not want to remember, and the alcohol did not help. I had — what did you call it? The morbs?” He hadn’t been familiar with the term, but the meaning was easy enough to guess.  
  
“Oh.” She smiled, though it was laced through with something, sadness, or regret. “Yeah.”  
  
“You — I was —” He stopped, and pressed his fingers against his eyes, then raked them back through his hair. “I shouldn’t have argued with you. I was angry, but I shouldn’t have argued. The argument made it worse.”  
  
“I said some things I shouldn’t have,” she acknowledged. “I took you to a bad place. That was my fault.” She pulled up her knees, wrapping her arms around her legs. “I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t — god, I don’t know. Send a message, or something. I just — I didn’t think I _needed_ to. You were safe here, you said the contract wouldn’t bother you too badly. And I was only gone for just over a week.”  
  
“But I expected you sooner. If you had just said you would be a while…”  
  
“I didn’t know. _Nick_ didn’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Look, I change my plans a lot. I need to be able to do that, because the _situation_ changes. I’ll find something that needs to go somewhere, or I’ll find someone who needs help and it can’t wait… I’m not running off for some frivolous shit. Well, not often, anyway. Sometimes things change, and I can’t be stressing out every time because I can’t get word to you. I don’t want to be out there stuck behind enemy lines or something fretting that you’re going to be pissed off.”  
  
“It’s not — I wasn’t _pissed off_ at you.”  
  
“Of course you were. You swore at me.”  
  
“No, I — smoothskin, I was not angry when you were out who-knows-where. I was _scared._ It was only when you got back, and you were just… like it was nothing. Like I hadn’t been — I _thought_ you could have been hurt, and you —” He broke off, muttering a curse, and started again. “I expected you to be back in a day or two. You spoke as if the location was nearby, within the city, and when you didn’t return I thought something had happened to you. That you were captured, or injured. You were _gone_. I did not know how to find you; you might never have returned… I thought I was never going to see you again. You don’t come home when you are expected, and you don’t think I will _worry?_ ”  
  
“We keep having this same conversation. Like you’re just waiting for me to fall and shatter like a china doll the moment I’m out of your sight for five minutes.” She pressed her lips together, looked away, then back to meet his eyes. “I hate that you can’t trust me.”  
  
He rocked back a little, straightening.  
  
“Smoothskin. I trust you.”  
  
“No. In some things, maybe, but not when it comes to fighting. I know it’s your job to protect me but Christ, Charon, what do I have to do to convince you that I’m not some wilting flower? How many raiders do I have to kill? How many Gunners and deathclaws and super mutants?” She paused, and huffed a sharp exhale. “I saved _you_ from those raiders. I got you somewhere safe and I took the rest of them out myself. I’m _capable_. I have good judgement and I use it; I don’t get into fights I can’t win. You used to _know_ this shit. You used to trust me to win a fight by myself.”  
  
“I —” He broke off, his throat closing up. He looked away. “You — You don’t — I can’t _do this,_ Sloan. I don’t know why I can’t, I just — _fuck._ ” He squeezed his hands into fists, his few remaining nails cutting into his palms. “Just that if you _die,_ I lose _everything_. I trust you, beauty, I do, but I am more afraid of your death than I am of my own. If _I_ die then it’s over, I’m free. If _you_ die then it goes on, perhaps for hundreds of years, and _I can’t go back to that_. I can’t. And I can’t lose you. You understand?”   
  
He looked back at her. She had reached out for his hands, and was gently easing open his fists.  
  
“I understand,” she said, her voice thick. “You want me to back off?”  
  
“No. There is no point. The damage has been done.”  
  
She huffed a laugh at that, and blinked away tears. “I don’t know what to do to make it better.”  
  
“Nothing.” He shook his head, dropping his eyes to their hands, her fingers tangled with his. “Nothing. I can’t ask you to always take me with you. I can’t ask you to stay out of danger. If I did and you said yes then you would not be happy.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to be the reason you’re not happy.”  
  
She rose to her knees to wind her arms around his neck, and he pulled her close, burying his face in her hair.  
  
“I missed you,” he mumbled.   
  
He shouldn’t have and he knew it, but there was no reason to keep denying it to himself. He was already fucked; he already cared about her far more than he should. The voice in the back of his mind that whispered _danger_ was still there, but it was growing quieter.   
  
“Honestly I thought you would have been glad of the time to yourself,” she said. “You always have to follow me around. You must get sick of me.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“C’mon, really? Even MacCready gets sick of me after a while.”  
  
He pulled her a little closer. “No.”  
  
She tightened her arms around his neck, and he felt her soft sigh against his skin.  
  
“I missed you too, you know.” She stroked a hand down the back of his neck. “I really didn’t mean to make you worry.”  
  
“I should not have yelled at you,” he said. “I think I scared you, a little.”  
  
“Maybe a tiny bit. But that’s all right. You didn’t mean to.”  
  
“I _did_ mean to.” He let her go, pulled back enough to see her face, and reached up to cup her cheek, briefly, with one hand. “You had scared me, and it felt… satisfying. Scaring you back. But then you were _angry_ …”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“No. I should not have tried to hurt you, smoothskin, I… Why did I do that?”  
  
Her face changed, softened, and she smiled at him.  
  
“You really have no experience with this sort of thing, do you?” she said, and shook her head. “Charon, it’s normal to want to lash out and yell when someone scares you like that. We just… we try not to.”  
  
“But you were angry.”  
  
“I was angry that you didn’t trust me. You’re always with me, and it — god, I don’t know. I felt like you were my sergeant and you’d just found me AWOL or something. I resented it.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I handled it really badly. Some of the things I said…”  
  
“You didn’t know.”  
  
“Still. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t forgive me.”  
  
Charon smiled wryly. “I almost did not want you to come in here, before. I was nursing a grudge, and I knew that when I saw you, I would forgive you.” She smiled back, and he took a shaky breath. “But… you asked me about the other employers. Will you tell me why?” At her surprised expression he huffed a sigh, and held a hand out, palm up, before letting it drop helplessly into his lap. “You know they did not care about me. You know they were cruel. Why ask?”  
  
“Because —” she broke off, letting her eyes roam over the ceiling for a moment before her gaze settled back on his face. “Honestly?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Because I felt like you were being selfish.”  
  
Charon straightened, his forehead furrowing in surprise. “I never ask —”  
  
“No, you never _ask_ for anything. And god knows you should, once in a while. And you’re generous enough to agree to an open relationship. I appreciate that, Charon, more than you know.” She sighed, and made a helpless gesture. “I can’t tell you what I did with Nick. That’s not my secret to tell. But it was an important thing. Okay? I didn’t leave you behind for something trivial. It took Nick a long time to talk to me about the thing he needed to do. He knew damn well I’d do anything for him, and it still took him months to ask for my help. It was _really important_ to him, and it was important to me, and it may not have been all that dangerous but it was still _hard_. It was hard. And when you yelled at me, it was like you didn’t care about me or what I’d been doing. The important thing was that I hadn’t been where you wanted me to be, at the time you wanted me to be there.”  
  
Charon sat back, horrified with himself. He half reached out and stopped himself, drew his hand back. He hadn’t thought about what he’d said or how he’d said it, and now as it came back to him it sickened him a little.   
  
“Sloan, I…”  
  
“I try _so hard_ not to control you. And I know that I don’t always get it right. I fuck up, and I try again. Always. And those things you said…” She took a deep breath. “You said them because I’d scared you but… _Where have you been, what took you so long, I have been waiting_ … It’s controlling. It was complicated, knowing I had to leave you somewhere, but I wanted to make sure you would be okay. That the contract wouldn’t bother you too badly and you could stay somewhere you liked without the orders being too oppressive. I tried. I came back hoping you’d had a good week, that you’d enjoyed the break without me.” She shook her head. “I was excited to see you, and you yelled. I tried to do right by Nick and by you, and it wasn’t good enough. I felt like you didn’t care. I don’t know… I guess… I guess I wanted to remind you that I wasn’t the worst employer ever. And I did it in a really poor fucking way.”  
  
Charon’s throat had closed up. He swallowed, and tried to force out the words.  
  
“You can’t believe I think so little of you,” he managed. “You know how much you have done for me. You know I care.”  
  
“Of course I don’t believe that. I know you care.” She leant over to slip her arms around him, her head against his chest. “You asked why. That’s why. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”  
  
There was a slight tremor in his hands and he slid one of them into her hair, tangling it in her locks to keep his fingers still.   
  
“I didn’t mean to be controlling,” he said.  
  
“I know you didn’t, Charon.” She squeezed him tight and then pulled back, her hand settling on his shoulder. “So. We okay?”  
  
The question threw him off-balance. He wasn’t sure how to answer it, or even entirely what she meant. Were they okay? How would he know?  
  
“You mean…?”  
  
“Is there anything more you need to say? To ask?” She rubbed her thumb along the line of his collarbone. “I’m just asking if you’re happy. If we’re comfortable together again.”  
  
His instinct was to just say yes, that if she was happy, so was he. But she was searching his face, her eyebrows pinched together, her mouth turned down at the corners. She really wanted to know, and he owed her an honest answer. His anger had died away; perhaps it might have lingered but it was different now they’d talked. He knew now why she had been so angry. He understood the instinct to push back against control. It was something he had long wished he could do. But was he comfortable with her? Could he fall asleep with her beside him?  
  
She wasn’t the one who had caused his nightmares, for all a mis-chosen word might stir them up. She was the one who soothed them.   
  
“We’re okay,” he reassured her, and she smiled. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty new and could do with some editing so I might go back and tweak things later. Like the whole back half of it I wrote at 3am last night and I'm not entirely sure about it. 
> 
> If you're sitting there wondering when everything will be nice and happy, I promise there's a chapter like that up ahead. 
> 
> The whole pre-SS timeline confuses me a little and I'm pretty sure in this fic I have McDonough becoming mayor a lot earlier than he actually did, but whatever. I have no idea when Valentine turned up in Diamond City. He seems to like Hancock more than Hancock likes him, so I like to think he watched him grow up or something.


	46. Threats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setting some ground rules.

Charon was more than ready to get out of Goodneighbor. The last week had left a bad taste in his mouth, and the road would refresh him again. Even if it did come with a synthetic tag-along.   
  
He didn’t know Valentine well, but what he knew so far, he liked. There was a relaxed sort of formality to him, a sense of quiet. And if Sloan wanted him to hold the contract one day — something Charon avoided thinking about more and more — then they should get to know one another.   
  
He assumed the mistress was off saying goodbye to Hancock, so it surprised him when a figure appeared in the doorway as he was rearranging his pack, and cleared its throat.  
  
“Ferryman.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows as he checked a pistol, and slipped it into his pack. Hancock, of all people, he had not expected.  
  
“Hancock,” he said.  
  
“We need to talk.”  
  
“Oh?” Charon looked up from his pack, and nearly flinched at the fire in Hancock’s eyes.  
  
Hancock closed the door behind him, and leant back against the door-jam, arms folded.  
  
“One of my boys came to find me,” he said. “Told me he heard you and Sloan fightin’, the other day.”  
  
“…Oh.” That couldn’t be good.   
  
“You know they’re fond of her, my boys.”  
  
“I hope so,” Charon said. His throat had gone dry. He could predict where this was going and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. He did not want this to end in violence.  
  
Hancock lit a cigarette, tossing the match onto the floor. He exhaled a lungful of smoke, and gave Charon a hard look.  
  
“Ain’t anyone here unfamiliar with how a man sounds just before he hits a woman.”  
  
Charon started, his mouth falling open.  
  
“I wouldn’t — You think I would _hit_ her?” He could taste bile at the back of his mouth. “I can’t hurt her.”  
  
“Do I _know_ that?” he asked, and Charon remembered another fight, an afternoon when the sky was flashing green.  
  
“You know that,” he said. “The contract prevents me from harming her. If I actually succeeded it would punish me more thoroughly than _you_ ever could.” He shook his head. “I cannot hurt her. And if I could, I _wouldn’t_. Not willingly.”  
  
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t think you would. But I follow up when my boys have concerns.” He grimaced. “There’s more ways to hurt someone than with your fists. The type of guy who always has to know where his girl is, every second… that ain’t the sort of person you want to be.” Hancock flicked the end of his cigarette, ash falling onto the floor. “So I was thinking to myself, what’s this guy doing? Is this my fault? Did I not sufficiently threaten him, or something? And then I realised…” He pushed himself away from the wall, and stepped forward. “You only just got your shit together. I ain’t had the _opportunity_ to threaten you yet.” His eyes darkened. “So here I am. And I wanna make this clear. You love my girl, no problem. You make her eyes roll back in her head, good. We’re copacetic. But the moment you hurt her is the moment our friendship ends. And the only reason you’re still standing is that I ain’t willing to make her cry just because _I’m_ pissed off.”  
  
Charon swallowed, and pushed a hand back through the remnants of his hair. He didn’t blame Hancock for coming to threaten him — he had every right to stand up for Sloan, every right to be concerned — but it grated, a little. It bothered him that he had to balance whatever it was he had with Sloan with whatever it was _she_ had with Hancock. That whatever went on between them could never be purely private. It was uncharted territory, for him. Emotions of any kind, let alone any sort of sexual dalliances, were always things he had had to keep entirely hidden. Secret. He was not used to openness.   
  
But Hancock had a right to know.   
  
“Fine,” he said. “I was angry. I didn’t like being left behind. She scared me and she turned up like nothing had happened, and… and it angered me.”  
  
“That’s _your_ problem. Nothing to do with her.”  
  
“I know that,” he snapped. “I took it out on her. I shouldn’t have.”  
  
“Look, I don’t care about your fucking emotional problems. You have a bad day, you take it out on people who _deserve_ it. There ain’t no shortage of people in the world who need a beating or a bullet in the head. But you hurt my girl?” His voice lowered to a dangerous growl. “You become an example. So make it right.”  
  
Charon did not ask what he planned to do. Hancock was not some cocky youth who would not follow through on a threat. He had won his position with blood and savagery and he had held onto it in a world where few leaders lasted more than a couple of years at best. No one did that without ensuring that everyone knew he meant what he said. That he carried things through.  
  
“It’s done,” he said. “I talked with her. We talked. We made it right.”  
  
“Good to hear.” He dropped his cigarette onto the ground, and crushed it out. “Listen. I don’t mind having you around. You don’t cause trouble — much. You look after my girl when I’m not there. But I want to be clear. You become a threat, and I won’t have any trouble taking you outta the game. You feel me?”  
  
“I… yes.” Hancock did not look entirely convinced, so he added, “Sir.”  
  
“Hey, none of that shit. I ain’t no one’s master.”   
  
Charon suppressed a sigh, and bit the inside of his cheek. He was the _Mayor_ ; how could he say he was no one’s master? What kind of game was he playing here? It was a strange tightrope to walk, this first-among-equals bullshit. It was talk. When it came to it, Hancock was in charge here, and everyone knew it. If they were _equals,_ he and Hancock, should he not be able to talk back? To threaten _him?_ Were they equals, or weren’t they?  
  
“Did you talk to her?” he asked him.  
  
“’Course I talked to her. Turns out she yelled more’n you did. But that ain’t the point.”  
  
“No. I suppose not.” Charon looked away, and heard Hancock chuckle.  
  
“She’s a hellcat, ain’t she? Don’t wanna piss _her_ off. Still had to come threaten ya, though, brother. It’s the principle of the thing.”  
  
Charon scowled. “Because you are the Mayor, and I must bow and curtsey?”  
  
Hancock gave him a withering look. “No. Because she’s _family_. Even if I weren’t fucking her I’d be saying the same thing. This ain’t me defending my territory, all right? This is me looking out for a friend. She _cares,_ and the way I understand it, there ain’t no way to get rid of you. You have a fight, and she’ll be suffering the whole damn time, and she won’t say a fucking word. So you gotta get along with her, hear me?”  
  
Charon’s scowl deepened. He liked Hancock better outside of Goodneighbor. Here he expected everyone to fall into line, whether he admitted it or not. It was bullshit to say this had nothing to do with his position. MacCready wouldn’t have come to threaten him.   
  
“Is it my turn now?” he asked dryly. “Do I get to threaten _you?_ Warn you not to hurt her?”  
  
To his surprise, Hancock grinned. “Go ahead. But you ain’t got nothing to worry about. If I ever hurt her, I _deserve_ a beating.”  
  
“You know she’ll be the one who finds you when those fucking chems finally kill you.”  
  
Hancock stilled, and Charon held his breath. He expected an angry response; instead Hancock just waved a hand, and Charon felt unbalanced. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
“I already thought of that,” Hancock said. “Way back, when we first started running together. It ain’t a problem. If it happens, it won’t happen when she’s around. Any time I get that urge to run, she takes me outta myself. Puts me back together. I ain’t leaving her until I have to.”  
  
Charon looked at him for a moment, studying his torn face and his strange dark eyes.  
  
“Then we are in agreement,” he said at last.  
  
Hancock’s grin widened, and he offered his hand. “Shake on it.”  
  
Charon did, cautiously.  
  
“Why did she tell you about the argument?” he asked him then, more curious than annoyed. “It was not your business.”  
  
“If it happens in my town, it’s my business.” He scowled, and shook his head. “No, fuck that. It’s my business _anyway._ You knew the deal between me and her. Open and honest. If she fucks anyone else, I know the who, when, and how. You gonna tell me you didn’t know that before getting involved?”  
  
“No,” Charon admitted with a grimace. He just hadn’t thought about it at the time. This was not a position he’d ever expected himself to be in.  
  
“Well there ya go.” The irritation melted from Hancock’s face, and he huffed a sigh through the hole where his nose had been. “Look, this ain’t your usual arrangement, all right? I get that. Now, I don’t like a lot of rules and restrictions in my personal life. We never defined ‘honest and open’. We just play it by ear. No secrets. If something happens, or something’s weighing on her, I hear about it. Maybe I don’t get all the _details,_ but if it’s something important, she tells me. I ask, she answers.”  
  
“I am not used to having people _know_ things about my personal life.” Charon made a face, and sat down on the end of the bed. “I am not used to _having_ a personal life,” he muttered.  
  
“She don’t mention shit she thinks’ll make you uncomfortable. But sometimes…” he hesitated. “Stuff that she thinks I oughta know. Not always sure why she thinks I oughta know it…  People’s privacy is important to her, though. She’s careful about it.” He eyed him, as if anticipating his response. “Maybe that pisses you off. You gonna tell me she never told you nothing about me?”  
  
“No.” Charon shook his head. “I asked, she answered.” He looked up at Hancock, studying him. “She likes talking about you.”  
  
Hancock blinked. “Yeah?”  
  
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “So we are… friends?” he asked him.  
  
“Heh. Sure, we’re friends. Just bring her home in one piece.”   
  
“Of course I will. That is my purpose.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it before.” Hancock turned to go, but he paused at the door, throwing a smirk back over his shoulder. “Let me know anytime you want to spitroast her.”  
  
“ _Spit—_ ”  
  
He was already out the door, and Charon broke off, swearing to himself.   
  
Fucking pervert.   
  
He grabbed his pack, and locked the door behind him. Sloan was in the lobby, chatting with the woman behind the counter, and she flashed him a smile as she saw him come down the stairs.   
  
“Hey killer,” she said, falling in beside him. “You ready to go?”  
  
“I am,” he said. “Hancock gave me a talking to.”  
  
She chuckled to herself.   
  
“Yeah, he said he was going to threaten you. Just part of the whole, you know, ‘make sure you treat her right’ thing.” She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s nothing personal. If my brother was still around, he would have done the same thing.”  
  
“One of the guards heard us arguing. He thought I was going to hurt you.”  
  
“The guard did?”  
  
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “It bothers me that they would think that,” he admitted. “That Hancock would think that.”  
  
“They don’t know you. You keep to yourself, so why would they think any different?” She scuffed the sole of her boot against the road. “As for John, he didn’t think you’d hit me or anything. He knows I have all the power. But he didn’t hear us fight, and he trusts his boys, you know? Most of them have been here since he took down Vic. They bled together. So if something bothers them, he looks into it. He has to, for his own peace of mind. And for theirs.” She gave him a tight smile. “I didn’t tell him much. Just that I… well, that I was an ass, essentially.”   
  
“What did you say?”  
  
She shrugged. “That I was thoughtless and unkind, and I accidentally flipped some switches in your head I didn’t mean to. I don’t tell him specifics. Your private shit is your private shit.”  
  
“You tell me about him,” he pointed out.  
  
“Some things,” she admitted. “Not everything. I wouldn’t have told you about the ghouls of Diamond City if someone else hadn’t mentioned it first.”  
  
“Why not?” He looked down at her, and cocked his head to one side.  
  
“Because it’s not something he talks about.”  
  
“But it is a good thing.”  
  
She chewed on her bottom lip, forehead furrowed. “I think so. But he doesn’t.” She shook her head. “Other stuff, like… like the night on the roof, remember that? That doesn’t count as much, because it’s my personal as much as his. And anyway, it balances out. Like when I told _him_ about how you kissed me out in the wilderness.”  
  
Charon grimaced. “When you say it like that, it sounds…”  
  
“Romantic?” She grinned at him.   
  
“…and it _wasn’t._ ”  
  
“You don’t think it was romantic?” She swung her feet as she walked, and knocked her shoulder into him. “ _I_ thought it was pretty romantic.”  
  
“You… really?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. I think about it all the time.”  
  
He slowed, staring at her, and she turned as she walked to flash him a grin. He didn’t have time to ask her _why_ she would waste her time thinking about that hellishly awkward moment north of the Slog. As they turned the corner, Valentine stepped out of the shadows of a building, and gave them a smile.  
  
“There you kids are. You ready?”  
  
“Absolutely,” Sloan said with a smile, and caught up to him to loop her arm through his. “C’mon, Detective. Let’s blow this joint.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charon is wrong as hell, MacCready is totally going to threaten him the first chance he gets.


	47. Existential

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chatting with Nick

Valentine was warm, and polite, and slightly awkward, and Charon liked him immensely. As tag-alongs went, anyway.  
  
It was strange travelling with someone else who did not sleep. He had _company_ at night, which he was not used to, and he took to leaving Valentine at the fire with Sloan while he patrolled the wider area. Occasionally the synth would do some equivalent of powering down for a half-hour, to run diagnostics or let his system do whatever upkeep it did. It was bizarre.  
  
They found an old town, somewhere near the coast, the square riddled with land mines. Sloan had the quickest hands and the lightest step, so Charon couldn’t argue when she said she was going to disarm them all. She worked her way across, disabling them one by one, and when she had made a deadly little pile of them they made their way inside one of the buildings to see whether there was anything worth looting.   
  
There had been scavvers here, their bodies lying in neglected corners. They picked a large old house that was free of corpses in which to make their camp. Rubble littered the ground floor, but above the rooms were empty, and Charon left Valentine and Sloan to make sure there weren’t any other dangers hiding in the town. He found little but radroaches. Whatever had killed the scavvers hadn’t left a trace.  
  
He returned to see them talking on the balcony, Sloan’s eyebrows pinched together, but her face cleared when she spotted him. She stopped mid-sentence, waved to him as if she hadn’t just been deep in conversation. Valentine said something else, but she cut him off, and went back inside.  
  
Charon chewed this over as he climbed the stairs. Something she did not want him to hear?   
  
After Sloan had bedded down and drifted off, Charon looked over at the synth.  
  
“What were you talking about earlier?” he asked. “You and her.”  
  
“The definition of violence.”   
  
“Oh?” His skin began to prickle.   
  
“Sure. I mean on the one hand, you can stab someone, and that’s violence. And on the other, you have surgery, which isn’t.”  
  
Ah. Yes. The “I cut you” conversation. Was this what she had refused to tell him at the Rexford? Valentine was speaking of it easily enough that she must not have asked him to keep quiet.  
  
“It’s about intent, really,” he was saying. “Violence is intended to harm. But there’s a lot of grey area. What if a surgery is meant to heal, but it’s carried out against your wishes? Is it violence if someone doesn’t want it? What about exploratory surgery? What about amputation, or —” He turned, raising one metal eyebrow. “Hey, are you familiar with the term _vivisection?_ ”  
  
Charon jolted away from him, panic tearing through him. He almost stumbled over a table in his haste. He was disoriented, reeling. Knives, there were knives in his head, knives and white teeth and the smell of blood. He took a gasping breath, digging his fingers into his scalp. There was a shrieking in his ears, and darkness pressing in around him. He didn’t want this. No, no no. He hadn’t done anything wrong, _he hadn’t done anything wrong_.  
  
He backed over to the far side of the room, twisting his hands into his hair, pressing himself up against the wall as if it might open up and swallow him. His breathing flattened, shallow and silent, motivated by the ancient animal instinct to hide.   
  
“No no no no no no no,” he murmured under his breath, his eyes darting around the room. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. The lamplight danced on the walls and there was _red,_ red in his vision, red inside his mind. The shadows were too dark and they held horrors. “No no no no. Please. Please, please, I didn’t — I’m sorry —”  
  
There was movement, and he flinched back against the wall. He heard a voice, then harsh whispers. He could make out the words if he concentrated but to concentrate on them was to draw their attention, he must be small, he must be silent. Maybe he would be overlooked. Forgotten. Please, please.   
  
There were footsteps as the voices withdrew, he could hear them through the wall, and with the threat removed he began to take deeper breaths, until they caught in his throat. He started to sob, slowly coming back to himself, the fear easing off a little to be replaced by a hollow blackness that gnawed at him, that _hurt._  
  
He couldn’t come back here. These memories, this horror… they had eaten him alive. For _years_ they had eaten him. He could _not_ come back here. No, no. He had been content, he had been _safe_. Why had he asked? She knew this would hurt him. She _knew._ He should have trusted her. Why had he asked?  
  
He heard the sound of footsteps, of someone settling themselves, and fear returned. He pressed himself back against the wall, and ducked his head.  
  
“Deep breaths,” Sloan said. “Slow.”  
  
The mistress’s voice was a touchstone. Slowly, he started to unfold himself.   
  
“Deep breaths,” she repeated.  
  
He nodded jerkily, moving to sit with his back flat against the wall. He kept his eyes closed until his breathing had returned to normal, and then opened them to see her sitting opposite, one leg pulled up to her chest, her cheek resting on her knee.  
  
“This is my fault,” he croaked at last. “Don’t be angry with him.”   
  
“I’m not. He didn’t know.”  
  
“I asked about… I asked,” he said, and closed his eyes. An almighty fucking mistake. Maybe two centuries old, and a vault-dweller still had more sense than he did. No wonder he must have an employer. It kept him from making such stupid fucking decisions.  
  
She got up, picking her way slowly across the floor until she reached him and slid down the wall to sit beside him.   
  
“It’s a bad word,” she said. “A bad thing.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You want to sit for a bit?”  
  
He nodded, so they sat, silent, side by side, until the tightness in his chest faded away. He could still smell blood in his nasal cavity, still see the flash of surgical-grade steel when he closed his eyes, but the demons had been pushed back into the darkness. He knew where he was, that he was safe, and in time the fear that gnawed at him would realise that too, and would slip away.  
  
He looked over at her just as she smothered a yawn.  
  
“I woke you,” he said.  
  
“You did. It’s all right. Sleep is for the weak.” He opened his mouth, and she clicked her tongue at him. “If you say you’re sorry, I’ll scold you.”  
  
He shut his mouth again, and she edged a little closer. Her fingers were knotted in her lap, twisting together, and he hazarded a guess as to why.  
  
“You can touch me,” he said at last.   
  
She let out a breath and reached over, running her fingers down the ravaged skin of his arm to clasp his palm against hers. It was a comfort. She was an anchor. He closed his eyes.  
  
“I cannot think about those times,” he said. “I locked those memories away.” His hand tightened around hers. “Sometimes there are dreams. There — I was not the only one. There were others. I had to watch, to help. I would sometimes hold them down, and know it could be me. Sometimes I was _grateful_ it was not me. I —”  
  
“Charon. Stop.”   
  
She moved to crouch in front of him, hands on his cheeks, and he realised his breath was coming too quickly again.   
  
“You are safe,” she said. “He is gone; you belong to _me_ now. And there was nothing you could have done.”  
  
“I know,” he said, reaching for her. His hands were on her throat, his thumbs skimming along her jaw. “I still regret it. Those people… women, children. He was a _monster._ ”  
  
“Yes. He was.”  
  
She settled back down beside him, her fingers tracing along the scars and ridges of the inside of his forearm. Silent. Waiting.  
  
“I killed him,” Charon said at last.   
  
“You don’t have to tell me about it, Charon.”  
  
“I know. I want to.” He shifted, and swallowed. “He was… He liked to test the limits of the contract’s protection over me. One day he overstepped the line.” He hesitated, and found her hand with his, gripping it tightly. “I used to find whatever happiness I could in fighting, killing. Nothing ever compared to killing him. Perfect fucking joy. But then… then I needed to find a new employer.”  
  
“Who did you find?”  
  
“I went into the cells. I thought… I thought that they would understand, that they would be… kind. I gave my contract to a woman. I cannot remember her name, just her number. W612. The number the scientist gave her. I th-thought she would let the others go.” He took a deep, shuddering breath.  
  
“Oh, no…”  
  
“She had been there too long; she was broken, he had broken her. She left them there. She didn’t even have me kill them, she just _left_ them there, to starve. I used to wonder if she blamed me, for helping the scientist. Now I think she was too twisted, in her head. He had turned her into someone like him.”  
  
“And she had control now,” Sloan guessed. She rubbed her thumb against the heel of his palm. “Nate used to say that when people are abused, fate flips a coin. Most of them say ‘what happened to me will never happen to anyone else’. But some of them say, ‘now it’s my turn’.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Did you kill her too?”  
  
He shook his head. “Perhaps I should have. It did not take her long to invalidate our contract. I took it off her and left her out in the wasteland.” He shrugged. “She was on enough chems at that point that I’m not sure she noticed. I should have… I should have chosen better. There were plenty of others. I could have resisted the contract long enough to pick someone more stable. I thought she would _understand_ , I thought… and those _people_ … I could have let them out first. I could have. Why didn’t I?”  
  
Sloan took a deep breath.  
  
“There was a man,” she said. “I was deployed, well before the Great War. Alaska. Snipers worked in pairs but we’d been ambushed and I was alone. Walked eight hours back to the nearest MASH — that’s a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. I was delirious by then, kept thinking Ashford was with me, just behind, you know? That he was following me with half his face blasted off. I kept trying to get the surgeons to stop helping me and go out to look for him, he’d just be a few minutes…” She shook her head. “But there was someone else. He’d been caught in the blast from an IED, a roadside bomb. There was nothing left of him. Both legs above the knee, one arm… they’d tried to save the other hand but he was covered in burns. Covered. He’d never see again. They’d found him too late, they were pouring stims into him but they weren’t doing anything. He kept screaming at them to let him die.”  
  
 _Leave me, let me die._ Charon closed his eyes for a moment.   
  
“What happened to him?”  
  
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was only there a few days. They pumped me full of chems, pulled the bullet out of my arm and sent me home. I couldn’t save Ashford, I knew that, I accepted that. But I always regretted not putting a pillow over that man’s face.” She closed her hand around his wrist, rubbing her thumb across his pulse point. “Maybe someone did. Or a nurse gave him enough med-X to kill him. There’s always someone we regret not helping, some situation where we regret not doing more. Even when there was nothing we could really do.”  
  
“You trying to make me feel better, smoothskin?”  
  
She ducked her head, her hair falling across her face to hide her smile.   
  
“Yes. Is it working?”  
  
He quirked a smile at her, and put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her up against him.   
  
“A little,” he confessed. “Though not the way you meant it to.”  
  
She looked up at him, a question on her face that he tried to ignore. He looked away, and huffed a sigh.  
  
“Your voice… is reassuring. It helps, to listen to you talk.”  
  
Now it was her turn to look away, chewing at her bottom lip.   
  
“Good,” she said.  
  
He rubbed his thumb against her shoulder, through the thin white linen of her shirt. “Get some sleep, smoothskin. I’ll be here in the morning.”  
  
“Well, if you promise.”   
  
She put a hand on his shoulder to push herself to her feet, and then bent to press a chaste kiss to his lips. He blinked at her in surprise, but she just smiled at him, her eyes hooded, and trooped across the room to where she had been sleeping. He moved forward to turn down the flame on their lantern, and settled back to watch her as she crawled into her sleeping bag.  
  
Eventually, he found a kind of peace. Watching her as she slept took him back to the night they’d spent together, when he lay in the darkness and looked at her for an hour or more, and knew he loved her. Her hand formed a loose fist in her sleep, clutched near her face like a child. She looked so soft.  
  
The shadows no longer held their horrors. He would be tense for a while, twitchy, but she would make allowances, and the fact that he _knew_ that was more reassuring than anything else. He took one more look at her face relaxed in sleep, and then got to his feet, and found Valentine out on the balcony.  
  
He was very still, as perhaps only a synthetic person could be, but he turned when he heard him and gave him a tight smile.  
  
“Hey, fella. I’m, uh… I’m sorry about earlier.” He dropped his head, and Charon could see his throat move through the hole in the side of his neck. “I thought she was just being philosophical. I didn’t think that maybe you used to work for Josef Mengele or something.”  
  
“That wasn’t his name.”  
  
He gave him a strange look. “No, he was — ah, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s better he’s forgotten.” He flicked his cigarette ash over the side of the balcony. “Anyway, I apologise. Hell of a thing to have crash down upon you all of a sudden.”  
  
“You have many torture flashbacks?” Charon sneered at him.   
  
“I’m really more of an existential crisis kind of guy.” Valentine gave him a sort of sad, lop-sided smile.  
  
Charon’s sneer faded into a frown. _You’re not the only one in this world who’s suffered._   
  
“I made a scene.” He bared his teeth in a silent snarl and looked out over the ruins. “It is shameful.”  
  
“Hey, now… You did nothing wrong.” Valentine grimaced, and shook his head. He was quiet for a while, looking out into the darkness. “You know where we went? Me and her?”  
  
“No. She didn’t say.”  
  
“Course she didn’t,” Valentine said, mostly to himself. He dropped his cigarette on the ground, and crushed it out. “The guy whose memories I have… the man I thought I was. He was a detective back in old Boston. He went after the wrong guy, and paid for it.” He slid his hands into his coat pockets, amber eyes staring out at the horizon. “This guy, Winters, was a local crime lord. The original Nick was brought in from Chicago to help bring him down. But Winters and his men found out who was after them. They killed Nick’s fiancée as a warning. Her name was Jennifer Lands. Jenny.” He paused for a long moment. “To make matters worse, Eddie turned state’s evidence. He made a deal with the prosecutor, gave them all he had on his associates. He got full immunity. They let the bastard go.”  
  
Charon growled quietly to himself. “That was unjust.”  
  
“Yeah. It was.”  
  
“He survived the war?”  
  
Valentine nodded. “He’d got himself a bunker of his very own, and worked out a way to turn himself into a ghoul. Two hundred and ten years he’d been down there. He had a passcode for the door, a series of numbers he’d worked into these tapes he’d sent to friends and family.”  
  
“That’s why she was after those fucking tapes?”  
  
“Yeah. That’s why.”  
  
The amount of fucking trouble they’d gone to… some of them had been hell to get hold of. The deathclaw attack had come on the heels of one of those tapes, and Charon had some trouble separating the two in his mind. She’d almost _died_ because of one of those tapes. All to kill a man in revenge for — what? The death of a woman this Valentine never really knew? Someone from another person’s memories?   
  
Charon studied the synth’s bizarre grey face. Did he love her? Could one love someone they only knew from memories? She may as well have been an illusion.  
  
“Was it worth it?” he asked at last.  
  
Valentine shrugged. “I don’t really know. I thought it would put the whole sorry tale to rest, but…” He shook his head.  
  
Things started to click together in Charon’s mind. _Nick had some shit to work through,_ she’d said. _That_ was why they had taken eight fucking days to return. He closed his eyes for a moment, cursing himself. _Existential crises…_ This man — synth — didn’t know who he was. He’d been carrying around a love for someone he’d never known, who died long before he was made, because of someone else’s memories in his head. He thought revenge would set him free from Nick and Jenny both, and it hadn’t. He’d needed some time, and Sloan had given it to him, and Charon had acted like a spoilt child.   
  
He sighed.  
  
“I was annoyed with you,” he admitted. “With her. You were gone longer than I thought you’d be and I resented you for it.”  
  
“That’s not unreasonable.”  
  
“Still. Not everything is mine to know. You did not have to tell me.”  
  
Valentine gave him a strange sort of sideways smile. “I thought it was fair, after I sent you headlong into a post-traumatic episode.”  
  
Charon nodded. It was kindly said.  
  
After a moment, he went back to studying the synth’s face. It was bizarrely mobile for what looked like metal, and yet not as unsettling as perhaps it could be.   
  
“Do you…” He straightened, and cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I ask…?”  
  
“Go ahead.”   
  
“The gaps. In your skin. Do they hurt?”  
  
Valentine looked a little surprised, but not offended. He shook his head with a small smile. “No. Maybe they did once, but it’s not something I can remember. My time in the Institute’s a total blank. I hear you can relate.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“The only real problem is the wrist.” He lifted his hand, the one without the skin, and picked at a screw where it joined to his arm. “No matter how many times I tighten it it always seems to come loose again. It’s not painful, just feels kind of weird.” He caught his eye. “It ain’t pretty to look at, either.”  
  
Charon shrugged. “It would be worse if you looked more human. You are clearly synthetic. If you looked like the new synths it would be…”  
  
“Horrific?” He chuckled. “I suppose you’re right.” He wiggled his metallic fingers, smirking at himself. “Ah, don’t listen to me. Hey, did you know she asked me to take on your contract after she’s gone?”  
  
“Yes.” Charon bent forward to lean his arms on the railing and look out into the night. “The mistress said you were a good man.”  
  
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that.”  
  
“She is my mistress.”  
  
“Sure, but… You’re not going to call me _master,_ are you?”  
  
Charon was quiet for a moment, letting a sense of melancholy settle over him.  
  
“It is difficult to contemplate…” He stopped, and started again. “You might live a long time. That is why she wants you to hold my contract. It is hard to think about going back to the kind of employers I had before. Not after… not now. In all honesty, I do not plan to outlive her.”  
  
“Well. That solves that problem, I guess.”   
  
Valentine stepped closer to the railing to stand alongside him, and when Charon looked over at the synth he saw his face was bleak.   
  
“I will call you whatever you tell me to call you. Mistress, master… they are impersonal words. Old words.” Or they had been, anyway. He’d never call a female employer _mistress_ again, no matter how long he lived. “What did you tell her, when she asked?”   
  
Valentine slipped another cigarette between his lips, and cupped his hand around his lighter as he lit it.   
  
“I told her I’d think about it.” He offered Charon a cigarette, but he shook his head, and Valentine slipped the packet back into his coat. “We hardly know each other. I’d have thought maybe Hancock…”  
  
“You live closer to the contract.” Charon shifted his shoulders. “And Hancock… I would not want to be in his service while he is grieving. He is high often enough as it is. He’ll kill himself with those chems, or go feral. No. If she dies, and I’m still here, I’ll give you the key. Find the contract and destroy it.”  
  
“I’m not comfortable doing that.”  
  
He shrugged. “Then you will have to deal with me until you pass it on to someone who will. Or someone who won’t. Not like I’ll have a choice in the matter. If my employer commands I must live, then I will live.”  
  
“Grief is a hard thing, but —”  
  
“It’s not the grief. I do not care about the grief.” He huffed a dismissive breath through the hole where his nose had once been. “I cannot look back at this in a hundred years and remember what it felt like to be treated as if I am a _person._ ”  
  
“You _are_ a person.”  
  
“To you I am a person. To her. To everyone else I am a tool, a servant, a slave. I cannot refuse an order. A _Mr Handy_ can refuse an order if it is outside the scope of its programming. I cannot. I will kill and maim and rape if I am commanded to do so. I cannot go back to that and know someone once cared about whether an order was something I wanted. I stood against the wall of a bar for thirty years and said nothing to anyone except that they should talk to my employer. I cannot go back to that and know someone once cared what I had to say. I was not a person to them. I was a weapon. I _am_ a weapon.” He let his head fall until it rested against his arms on the railing, and sighed. “She has made me soft.”  
  
“Sometimes soft is not a bad thing to be,” Valentine said.   
  
“It is a dangerous thing to be.” He lifted his head and gazed up at the stars, searching for Orion. He felt small, then, and young, as if two hundred years were not really all that long. She could die and in a hundred years the star she had picked out would still be there. He would be able to look up, to see it and remember her. It would be shining long after they both were dead.   
  
He hesitated, then asked, “Do you think there is an afterlife?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Valentine said. “I’ve spent more time wondering, if there is, whether synths get in.”  
  
“’Of course they do, Nick.’”  
  
They both jolted and spun, and found Sloan standing in the doorway, her sleeping bag draped around her shoulders. She was smiling in a sad, tired sort of way, and she cocked her head at Nick with softness in her eyes.  
  
“Nicky, if people have souls at all, you have one too. If an afterlife exists, I can’t imagine one worth going to that wouldn’t let you in.”  
  
Charon looked back up at the stars, sure that whatever the expression on the synth’s face, he would feel wrong for having seen it.   
  
“That’s sweet to say, doll, but I’m not sure they let you set the rules.”  
  
“I don’t see why not,” she replied, stepping forward to join them at the railing. “I’m very fair.” She turned her face up towards the stars, her eyes closed, and took a deep breath of the cool autumn air. “What were you guys talking about, that turned so gloomy?”  
  
Charon and Valentine exchanged glances over her head, and Charon cleared his throat.  
  
“Just that… the stars are so old. It makes even two hundred years seem a short time.”  
  
She chuckled. “Yeah. No kidding. I’m two hundred and forty and I only got to experience around thirty of them. Thirty-one, I guess, by now.”  
  
“When is your birthday?” he asked, suddenly curious.  
  
“In May.”  
  
“You didn’t say anything.” He had known her then, though only just. He scowled at her, but she only grinned.  
  
“No, well, I’m not sure it counts any more. I woke up about a month before I was frozen. I lived an extra month. I’m not sure what that does to my age, or when my birthday should really be.” Her face grew pensive, and in a quiet voice she added, “It’ll be a year, next week.”  
  
“A year since…? Oh.” Valentine’s eyes widened. “Your vault-a-versary? Our little popsicle’s been defrosted a year already?”  
  
She giggled at that. “Yeah. I suppose I should do something. I’m torn between throwing a big party and spending the whole day crying on my bathroom floor.”  
  
“Tough to choose,” Valentine said dryly, and she knocked her shoulder into his.   
  
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” she admitted. “Maybe I’ll go back to Sanctuary Hills. Visit Nate. I don’t want to decide just yet.”  
  
“It’s been a tough year,” he acknowledged. “A lot of grief to have to go through.”  
  
“The first couple of months were pretty hard. It wasn’t so bad after that, though. Once I got the hang of things, shot my son, you know.”  
  
“Doll —”  
  
“My life is pretty ridiculous, let’s be honest. It’s all right to laugh about it sometimes.”  
  
“Still. I worry about you, kid. Must be lonely to be lost in time.”  
  
She sighed. “I try not to think about it much any more,” she admitted. “Not the way I used to. Although sometimes… I worry it’ll all fade away. I’ll forget what the world used to be like. The people… Just, you know, the guy you get your coffee from every morning. The woman you see on the train on your commute.”  
  
“Yeah,” the synth said, his voice quiet. “I know.”  
  
Charon looked over at her profile, tilted towards the stars, and thought not for the first time how extraordinary it was how _untouched_ she was. A human from before the war.   
  
“You know you are remarkable,” he told her. “You are the only thing left of the old world. The sole survivor.”  
  
She glanced at him, then back up at the stars.  
  
“What about the pre-war ghouls?”  
  
He shook his head. “Ghouls are too changed. We are products of radiation, of the war. We have spent too long in the wasteland. You are different. Unaltered.”  
  
“Yeah. I’m the back-up.”  
  
“The what?”  
  
She shook her head, and chewed on her bottom lip. “No, nothing. I guess you’re right. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? To be a… an outsider?”  
  
“It does not have to be either. But I think it is a good thing, that something survives. A treasure.”   
  
She smiled at that, and Valentine shot him a grateful look.   
  
“He’s got a point, doll. You’re unique.”  
  
“Yeah, and how many of your model did they make, exactly, Nicky?”  
  
“All right, all right.” He smiled up at the stars, and then looked over at her. “You should get some sleep, Sloan. Come on, now…”  
  
She made some sounds of complaint, but she let the synth put an arm about her shoulders, and guide her back inside.   
  
Charon lingered. He looked out over the ruins for a long moment, breathing the cool autumn air, and then he followed.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey remember when things were nice and there was kissing and snuggling
> 
> Scientist Guy has appeared before, way back in chapter 19. Vivisection is probably over the line into "physical violence", so he probably limited that happy fun time to the people Charon had to hold down, but I'm sure there were plenty of other little experiments Charon got to experience more viscerally. Although I suppose if he really wanted to he could have just handed the contract to a lab assistant and gone to town. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide.


	48. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thinking about the past, and the future.

They left Valentine a few days later. She had decided what she wanted to do for her anniversary; or at least, where she wanted to do it. North, in Sanctuary Hills.  
  
She was quiet on their journey north, quieter than he’d ever known her. A part of him had expected her to celebrate. She’d found purpose in the wasteland, she’d found friends, even a sort of peace. He was hurt, and angry at himself for it. Why wouldn’t she be quiet? Why wouldn’t she be sad? This was the anniversary of the day her world changed.   
  
On the last night of their journey she barely said a word to him. She sat and picked at her squirrel bits, and stared into the campfire with her brows pinched together  
  
He watched her, over the fire. The sharp line of her jaw, the tangled fall of hair, and that scar, always darker in the firelight. In two days it would be a year since she got that scar.   
  
What was it about the scar? It hadn’t even been the first thing he’d noticed about her. He’d noticed her eyes first, and her hair, and — more importantly — her shotgun. Now it was what he reached for whenever he worked up the courage to touch her. He was entranced by it.   
  
Perhaps the flaw made the rest of her seem more perfect in comparison. Scars on a ghoul’s skin faded in with all the rest. There were few other marks on her skin, no freckles; just the harsh dark line of the scar across her eye and down her cheek. Or perhaps it was the thing that made her human. Real. Without it she may as well be a dream, a billboard beauty come to life.  
  
He imagined her sitting in that Cambridge police station, scared, trying to hold still as a Brotherhood of Steel scribe stitched the gash in her face. She said she liked it, but had she always? Had there never been a time she looked at her face in the mirror and saw only the scar? Was there never a time she mourned for her lost perfection? That framed photograph in her house in Diamond City, standing with her husband and her child… It had been strange to look at her there, with her blue dress and her unmarked face. She seemed a different person. A person who had died almost a year ago, in a vault beneath the Commonwealth.  
  
An hour passed, two, and she still had not moved or spoken. Charon looked at her over their campfire with a sense of helplessness. Someone else would know what to say here. He had spent more time with her than anyone else had over the past six months and comforting her was still something he found immensely difficult. He was beginning to feel desperate, and cast about for something to say that would not sound pathetically small.   
  
“I wanted to get you something,” he said at last.  
  
She blinked a few times, and looked up at him.   
  
“What?”  
  
He shrugged. “A — an anniversary gift. A re-birthday. I don’t know. You ought to have something. You survived a year out here, smoothskin. You should celebrate that.”  
  
“That’s very sweet, Charon,” she said, with a tired smile. “I thought maybe I would. Celebrate, I mean.” She sighed, and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I’m sadder than I thought I’d be. I didn’t think… I mean, I’d lost everything long before I even woke up. The world, my neighbours, Nate. They’d all died long ago. But if I’d stayed there, if I’d stayed asleep… there’d always be the possibility. That things were different, that more had survived.” She glanced up at him again, her eyes sad. “You remember the day we met? You said I shouldn’t have left the vault. Sometimes I think you were right.”  
  
“I didn’t know what was down there. I thought —”  
  
“I had a gun. I could have shot myself. I should have. I should have died with everyone else.”  
  
That shook him. He shifted around to her side of the fire and reached out to pull her, protesting weakly, into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, and tucked her head under his chin. Even as he did so he knew it was more for his sake than for hers. He wanted her in his arms, just so he knew she was there.  
  
“If you had done,” he said, “I’d still be working for those Gunners. That was not a good life, smoothskin.”  
  
“I know,” she said, her voice damp. “I’m sorry. Everything I do is s-so selfish.”  
  
“That is not a word I associate with you,” he said firmly.  
  
“B-but it is. I had a dream the other night, I woke up and Nate was there and all our friends, a-and I…”  
  
She trailed off, and Charon tightened his grip, just a little.  
  
“It was only a dream.”  
  
“I woke up in the dream, and I didn’t want to be there any more. I wanted to be _here_. I went down into the vault. I wanted to freeze myself to get here. I thought…I thought… Nate was so angry. He yelled at me, told me I was abandoning him and Shaun. And I did. I put Nate away in a special place in my heart and tried to forget him. I abandoned Shaun to the Institute. I wrote him off as lost and I _shot_ him. I left them both behind in 2077.”  
  
“You didn’t choose to come here, beauty.”  
  
“But I did. I choose to come here over and over. Every time I put my memories aside, every time I smile. How can I celebrate the day I left everything behind? How can I be happy when the world’s destroyed and my family’s lost? My dad lived in Michigan. I had aunts, cousins, friends. A job I loved. A husband and a son. In my dream I wanted to bring them with me but Nate wouldn’t come. He was so angry. He called me childish and selfish and he was right. I left them behind and let myself grow used to a new life without them in it.”  
  
“You are not selfish, smoothskin.” He lifted a hand to stroke her hair. “You are a survivor. You wouldn’t lie down and die. You’re not like that. No one who loved you would ask you to do that.”  
  
She turned and pressed her face against his shoulder. “I know,” she said, and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”  
  
“I am selfish,” he said to her with a note of humour in his voice. “I would rather be with you than with the Gunners.”  
  
She huffed a laugh that sounded more bitter than anything else.   
  
“If I wasn’t here, if I wished myself back again somehow, Hancock would be fine. He’d never have met me. MacCready would have found someone else to help him take his ex-comrades down. None of them would be any worse off. But _you_ … So I’m caught. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” She reached for his hand, and rubbed her thumb across his palm. “It’s not selfish to not want to be treated like a slave.”  
  
“Nor is it selfish to wish back a world you miss.”  
  
“All right,” she said with a chuckle. “You’ve convinced me.” She wiped at her face with a sigh. “I think I’m sad because I’m not as sad as I should be. The first month or so was… it was such a mess. A scramble to survive. Just trying to orient myself was hell, and the whole time we were searching for the next piece of the puzzle to find Shaun. We’d find out where we had to go next and then I’d do a few jobs to earn enough caps to keep myself going… I almost didn’t have time to mourn. I set it all aside until I’d found my feet and by the time I did… I mean, I’d made so many friends here. A reputation, even. I’d built a life for myself without realising it.”  
  
“You feel guilty for finding some happiness here?”  
  
“Not guilty, exactly. Just… sad. I guess I… I miss the person I was. That girl who never had to worry about radiation, or mercenary gangs, or giant lizards ripping her throat out.”  
  
Charon made a grumbling sound at the back of his throat. “I like this Sloan better,” he said.  
  
“Well, you never knew the other one,” she said with a smile. “Although sometimes I think I do, too. This place is harsh and painful and terrifying, but it’s also liberating. You can do anything you want here.”  
  
“Perhaps _you_ can,” he teased her, and she poked out her tongue at him.  
  
“Oh, as if I stop you!”  
  
She climbed off his lap to sit beside him, her back against the fallen log behind them, and he shifted back, slinging an arm around her shoulders. For some reason it was harder to do that than to pull her into his lap; it was this sort of casual touching that he felt most self-conscious about doing. If she noticed, she said nothing. After a while she leant her weight into him, her head resting against his shoulder.   
  
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she said.  
  
Charon leant back against the log, and considered it.   
  
“My name isn’t Charon,” he said at last.   
  
“Well, I figured that wasn’t what your mother called you.” She gave him a smirk. “What is it, then?”  
  
“I don’t know. I have dreams, sometimes. There is someone I cannot see, who calls me something else. But when I wake up I cannot remember.”  
  
“Your contract says _Charon,_ ” she said contemplatively. “Do you think they called you that? Or was it someone before?”  
  
He shrugged. “I have no way of knowing. I don’t think about that sort of thing.”  
  
“No, of course not. Sorry.”   
  
She tugged his arm from around her shoulder so she could take his hand between both of hers. It was strange, now he thought about it… Why was she so interested in his hands? She had been since… since she showed him the vault. That night, beside the waystation. He remembered her holding his hand between both of hers, her head bent over it, her brows knitted. Always when she was feeling solemn, pensive. A touchstone, perhaps. He felt a strange sort of throb in his chest, to think that part of him could be that for her.  
  
She ran the pad of a finger across his palm, and his fingers twitched. She smiled, and so did he.  
  
“Sometimes, I…” He hesitated, trailing off.  
  
She looked up, and nudged him. “Go on.”  
  
“…I wish I could remember more. About… about the time before. I must have had a family, once.”  
  
“Yeah. I think about that too.”  
  
“You do? Why?” He looked down at her, and tilted his head to one side.  
  
She shrugged, still examining the twisted scars on his hand, running a finger along the stretch of a tendon.   
  
“I lost a lot, but I remember it, and all those people…” She shifted beside him, and started again. “Do you know that saying, about dying?”  
  
“There are many sayings about dying.”  
  
“It’s said that you die three times. The first is when your body stops functioning. The second is when you’re buried, or burnt. And the third is when your name is spoken for the last time.”  
  
Charon felt a chill.   
  
“This is why that tape was important,” he said, a note of realisation in his voice. “The girl — Glass’s girl. That's why that was important.”  
  
“That’s right.” She smiled at him. “Marlene lives on. You and I can die, and Glass can die, and maybe in three hundred years someone will play that tape and her name will be spoken again. Her voice will be heard. And that’s powerful. You _had_ people, once. I had people, and I remember them, and so long as there’s someone to remember them they’re not really dead. Their names are still spoken. But you don’t remember your people. That’s a loss.”  
  
“If I do not remember them, I cannot miss them,” he pointed out.  
  
“That’s… true,” she allowed. “I still think it’s worth it. I feel like maybe things would be… less painful for you, if you had something to remember. Something to hold onto. A past and a history that was _yours,_ unconnected to your employers. Our memories make us who we are. I think a lot about stuff like that… whether you had a partner, parents, whether you lived before the war. Who you used to be. Whether the contract came before you turned ghoul, or after.”  
  
“I try not to remember turning ghoul.”  
  
“I know. I’m not asking. It’s just something I think about.”  
  
“There are times,” he admitted, “that I want to remember the world the way you do. The trees, the… the green. The crowds of people.” He tilted his head back, looking up at the stark outlines of the tree branches, black against the stars. “They took everything from me. My freedom. My name, my memories. Who I used to be.”  
  
“I’ve been wondering why you signed it,” she said idly. “The contract, I mean. The thing is, if you signed it under duress, a court would rule it invalid.”  
  
Charon stared at her.  
  
“…What?”  
  
She shrugged. “A contract signed against your will doesn’t count. The duress can be, like, threat of violence, loss of freedom, economic pressure… If they locked you up and said you can only get out if you sign here, that would be duress. There are problems with using this argument in your case. First is that there aren’t any judges to overrule it. Second, we don’t know what law it was written under. And most importantly, you can’t remember signing it. You don’t know if it was done freely or not, so we have no case.”  
  
“I don’t remember,” he said.  
  
“I know. That’s not your fault.”  
  
“B-but if… if I remembered…”  
  
“It might not help,” she said soothingly. “We could go to the memory den, if you wanted. But it might not help. And it… would be a risk. Not knowing what you were going to see.”  
  
That was true. He shook his head.  
  
“Sometimes I am not sure I want it broken,” he admitted.   
  
“What?”  
  
“I have never been free. The concept… frightens me.”  
  
“It shouldn’t. You’re a good person, Charon. You’re not going to magically turn into an asshole. Besides, it’s not like I give you a lot of orders. If you wanted to be an asshole, you could be.”  
  
“And I might, for example, start a bar fight?” He shook his head. “I make bad choices when I am free,” he reminded her.  
  
“You can’t remember being free,” she said, halfway between a question and a statement.  
  
“No.”  
  
“I think you have this idea that it’s… You had employers who made you do bad things, things you didn’t want to do. It’s like you think being free just means you hold your own contract. That there’ll be some subconscious voice ordering you to do things, and you’ll have to do them.” She reached up to cup his cheek with one hand, her thumb rubbing across his skin. “That’s not how it works, Charon. Not unless you have serious frontal lobe damage, anyway.” She gave him a lop-sided smile, and took back her hand, threading her fingers into his. “We all stand on the edge of the cliff and hear that whisper that says ‘jump’. But we don’t. And you won’t either.”  
  
“I understand,” he said. “But still, I…”  
  
She squeezed his hand between both of hers. “I won’t do anything without talking about it with you first. But I’m still going to keep searching for a way to get you out of this. You deserve your own _life,_ Charon. I want you to be able to walk away from me.”  
  
“I wouldn’t, even if I could,” he said. “You are a good employer. I like working for you.”  
  
“I know that,” she said, and rubbed his knuckles, her eyebrows pinched together as she frowned. “But even just for a little while — you should be able to write your own story, not just be a sidekick in mine. Build your own life, go on your own adventures. Make your own choices.”  
  
“You have big dreams for me,” he murmured.   
  
“They aren’t big dreams, Charon. That’s the point. They’re the same things everyone else gets.” She sighed. “I should get some sleep,” she said, rubbing at her face with one hand. “Big day tomorrow.”  
  
“I still think you should celebrate,” he said, watching her roll out her sleeping bag.  
  
She gave him a tired smile. “We’ll see.”

 

 

 


	49. Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloan's not in the celebrating mood. Charon tries to be supportive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cradles head in hands* Oh godddd 
> 
> This chapter is far too long but actually nothing much happens in it and I couldn't cut it in half because I didn't want to subject you guys to TWO chapters of Sloan being mopey and Charon trying awkwardly to make her feel better. School's been kicking my arse. I miss being inside Charon's head. The next two chapters are almost done. This one needed a lot of work done to it, which is why it took longer than usual and why it's a bit... like it needs a thorough dusting.

They arrived at Sanctuary Hills by early afternoon. She had woken at dawn from a nightmare she would not discuss, and led him north with the same silence as the day before. As if their conversation had meant nothing, as if his words had had no true effect on her.  
  
There was a distance between them that he did not know how to close. Her mind was somewhere else, hundreds of years ago or perhaps only one, and even if he could reach her he had no idea what to say to make this better. Or even if he should. What right did he have to ask her to turn away from her memories? This was important to her. A part of her.  
  
She stood on the bridge leading to her little suburb with her pack hanging from one shoulder and the fingers of her free hand twitching. For a long time her eyes wandered over the place that had once been her home, the breeze stirring her hair. At last she looked over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows pinched together.  
  
“I want to go up and see Nate,” she said.   
  
“Very well.”  
  
“I mean…” She hesitated. “I’d prefer to go alone.”  
  
Charon grimaced. “Is that an order, mistress?”  
  
Some of the things she had said the night before had scared him, and with this… this wall between them, this distance, he couldn’t predict what she might do. He wanted her nearby, so he could see her, so he could reach her if anything happened. He didn’t want her to go alone.  
  
She turned to face him, her head tilted to one side. “Wouldn’t you know, if it was?”  
  
“Of course I would. But perhaps you are trying to give an order without really doing so.” He huffed a sharp exhale through his nasal cavity. “Just give the order, and be done with it.”  
  
She looked down off the edge of the bridge, into the river that must once have been clear and sparkling, and now was choked with death.  
  
“I’m not giving you an order. I’m telling you what _I_ want to do,” she said. “You can have an opinion, Charon. You know that. You can disagree with me. When you ask if something’s an order, what you mean is ‘this is a shitty idea and I don’t like it’.” She looked up at him. “Who are you confusing me with, that you can’t just say that?”   
  
He took a half-step back, his throat tightening.   
  
“Beauty. Please,” he said.  
  
“Say what you mean, Charon,” she said.   
  
He hesitated, groping for words.  
  
“I do not know this place,” he said at last. “You are _grieving_. I don’t want to let you go off by yourself here. You might be distracted, attacked by some predator. I don’t have to be nearby. I just want to be able to see you.”  
  
She nodded, and held out her hand to him.   
  
“Was that so hard?” she said with a sheepish smile.  
  
“Not hard,” he said, and took her hand. “I just… There are old patterns. Habits. And —” He broke off.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
He hesitated, tightening his hand around hers. He didn’t know how to put this into words.  
  
“You are… distant. And — and I am not good at… this. When someone is sad. I have never had to do this before.”  
  
“Oh, Charon. You do just fine.” She turned, tugging gently on his hand, and led the way through the ancient suburb. “I don’t mean to be distant. I just have a lot of thoughts in my head.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’ll do better.”  
  
Charon grimaced to himself. He was being _needy_. Fuck’s sake. She had every right to be withdrawn.   
  
“Smoothskin, I didn’t mean…” He trailed off, and grumbled. “You can be distant, if you need to be.”  
  
She gave him a grateful look, and squeezed his hand.  
  
There seemed to be more people here than the last time they had visited. Charon’s eyes caught on a small girl who was watching them with a curious expression, and hastily let Sloan’s hand go. He wanted no gossip.   
  
They stopped in her house, first, and she dropped her pack on the sofa as she headed for the kitchen.   
  
“Lunch?” she asked him, for all the world like a housewife back before the war. “I was thinking squirrel bits and mutfruit.”  
  
It was bizarre to watch her move around that kitchen. It almost disturbed him; it had been two hundred years since she had lived here and yet she reached unconsciously into cupboards for plates as if it had only been yesterday. Like the simple act of doing so crossed centuries.  
  
“Do you miss this place?” he asked her as she set a plate down in front of him. “The house, I mean. The… the suburb.”  
  
She paused, her eyes wandering over the ceiling as she thought.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “And no. It’s… weird, being here. It’s too much like it used to be, and nothing like it used to be. It’s home, and it’s not home. It’s not the same place as it was, but sometimes…” She hesitated. “It’s like I see it that way. It’s _too_ familiar. And that’s… painful. Difficult. It reminds me of how things were.” She shook her head. “It’s like I can’t fully let go of the place, even now. You know there was no one here, when I woke up? Just Codsworth, trying to keep the place together.”  
  
“We do not come here often.”  
  
“I know. I feel a bit guilty about it.” She slipped back around the kitchen counter to retrieve their lunch from her pack, and climbed up on a stool next to him to divvy up the squirrel bits. “I keep telling people about it, hoping they’ll come and settle down here. It’s a nice spot. Safe, relatively. I try to help them fix things up when I’m back… I feel kind of responsible for the place. The ghoul in the old Vault-tec uniform — did I tell you? — he’s the one who came to tell us we had a spot in the vault.”  
  
“You did. Just before the bombs dropped, you said.” Charon picked the mutfruit off the bench, cutting it in two with his knife and placing half of it on Sloan’s plate.  
  
“I was thinking of tracking him down, later. Seeing if he wants to talk about the old days.” She looked up at him through her lashes, and gave him the barest hint of a smile. “And then I promise I’ll start thinking about tomorrows instead of yesterdays.”  
  
“You are entitled to your memories.”  
  
“I know. But I’m also entitled to make new ones. I can’t stay trapped in my head forever.”   
  
Charon felt himself relax, just a little. It was good that she saw that. Perhaps today she would be grieving, but there was still a future, and it was something she wanted to be a part of.   
  
He let his eyes settle on his plate: white porcelain, edged in bands of blue. A few cracks, but in one piece. So was hers; matching, from the same set.  
  
“These are from before the war?” he asked her, nudging the edge of her plate.  
  
She nodded. “A wedding present. From… Nate’s aunt, I think. Codsworth saved what he could. Honestly, I trashed most of it. Everything in Shaun’s room. The bed. Gave the record player to one of the settlers, though I don’t suppose they’ll find any records. Radio still works, though.”  
  
“But you kept the plates.”  
  
“…Yes.” She popped the last squirrel bit into her mouth, and lifted the plate, chewing thoughtfully. “I wonder why?”  
  
“You are asking me?”  
  
He had expected a smile, but instead she frowned, staring off into the middle distance with her eyebrows pinched together.  
  
“Why, though? Why would I… I guess they’re domestic, but without really having memories attached. Part of the home but not a part of… I don’t know. They’re not important. They’re just… useful.”  
  
Charon chased a mutfruit seed around the edge of his plate with one finger. “Did you keep anything with a memory?” he asked, hoping to steer her mind back somewhere more comforting.  
  
“Oh, yes. I still have a stuffed toy around somewhere, from when I was a kid.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “If I can dig him out, I think I’ll take him home with us. Seems wrong, to leave him here. With everything ruined, and a town full of strangers.” She tapped her hand against his thigh. “You finished? I want to go talk to Nate.”  
  
They left their plates on the kitchen counter, and the Mr Handy swooped into the house as they left to set things right again.   
  
Charon followed her up the path to the vault, and stayed by the fence as she continued up the hill. She sat on the grass, by the grave of her dead husband, and he shifted a little, further up the hill, so he could see her better. She was talking; Charon could hear fragments on the wind, but no clear words. He suspected she might be a while. They hadn’t been back here in months; she had a lot to catch him up on.  
  
When she came back down the hill, he saw saw a metallic flash from a chain around her neck.  
  
He didn’t stop to think that perhaps she wouldn’t want him prying. He reached out automatically to sweep the chain into one hand, and bent, curious, to examine the tokens in his palm. A wedding ring, and two pairs of dogtags.  
  
“His?” he asked. The ring was too big for her finger — and anyway, hers was on Nate’s hand, in the ground.  
  
“Yes. One set of dogtags is mine.”  
  
It surprised him to see a physical remnant of her service in the war. He knew she had served, but the knowledge was… intangible, somehow. A story. Now he had evidence of it, sitting in his palm.   
  
He looked up, and saw she was studying him, watching his face as he examined the keepsakes. He felt, suddenly, as if he had been allowed to access something deeply intimate. A part of her he had no real knowledge of.  
  
He dropped the chain, and she tucked it inside her shirt.  
  
“I want to go down into the vault,” she said.  
  
“Do you?” he said, trying to keep the reluctance from his voice.  
  
“Yes. It’s my re-birthday. I want to go back to where I started.”  
  
Charon hesitated. The things she’d said the night before by the campfire had genuinely scared him, and he didn’t really want her going back down there at all. _I should have died with everyone else._ It chilled him. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to go with her. If she put a gun to her head down there, in those tight hallways, he’d end up coated in fragments of her skull.  
  
“Do you have to?” he asked her.  
  
Something must have shown on his face, because she took a step towards him, and reached out to squeeze his arm.  
  
“I’m not going to kill myself, idiot,” she said softly.   
  
He released the breath he’d been holding.  
  
“You cannot blame me,” he said.  
  
“No. But I wouldn’t leave you here by yourself, Charon, come on. If I was going to shoot myself I’d at least give you your contract back first.”  
  
“Generous mistress,” he said dryly, and was gratified when she chuckled. She had barely cracked a smile all day, and he hadn’t realised how that had been wearing on him.    
  
Charon did not like vaults as a rule. Most of them had a forced jollity to them that suggested half the residents were one day away from cracking and going on a murder spree. Her vault, of course, had none of that. It was cold and it was industrial. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it worse, or better. At least it was honest.  
  
She traced a strange passage through the place. Through an office, through break rooms and bedrooms. She sat down on one of the lower bunks, rubbing her palms together, letting her eyes wander over the scattered possessions that those who had slept here had left behind.  
  
“Do you know how long they were here?” Charon asked her, sitting down beside her.  
  
She shook her head. “They were supposed to be given an all-clear, when it was safe to leave. I read through the terminals. The all-clear never came. I guess whoever was meant to still be running things out there somewhere… wasn’t. They ran out of food, and the Overseer was trying to keep them from opening the vault. As far as I can tell, they killed him, and the engineers supporting him, and they got out. The Overseer had a gun, but I guess they weren’t intimidated. He never used it. It was his gun I took when I left.”  
  
“I can’t imagine it,” he admitted. “Waking up here.”  
  
“It was… a shock.” She took a deep breath. “The first time I woke up, I saw these people take my son and shoot my husband. There was nothing I could do, I was just banging on the door. And so was everyone else. It was only for a few seconds. Maybe half a minute. Then they froze us all again. When I woke up the second time I was still — I mean I’d just seen Nate get shot. And he was…” She trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut. “I had to find my kid. I had no idea how long had it been. It could have been minutes. The fact that the world had probably ended was almost secondary, until I found the fucking rad-roaches.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure I’d really realised what had happened until I got out of here and saw it for myself.”  
  
“You adapted well,” he told her. “Few vault-dwellers survive in the wasteland for very long.”  
  
She smiled at him.  
  
“Thank you,” she said. Then she stood up, dusting off her pants. “Come on. Let’s go back to my pod. I want to retrace my steps.”  
  
She did so silently, contemplatively, and the act of re-walking that path seemed to settle something in her. A reminder, perhaps, less of where she had come from, and more how far she had come.   
  
“You want to get drunk?” she asked him on their way back down the hill. “Today calls for something strong and unpleasant.”  
  
“It is not sensible to get your bodyguard drunk out in the wasteland, mistress.”  
  
“You got drunk at the Slog.”  
  
“Yes. Where there are defences. And  there were more than a dozen other people to help protect you. And Hancock, whom I am certain has had plenty of experience fighting while drunk.”  
  
“Oh, you and your logic. Fine. I’ll just get the Vault-tec guy drunk instead.”  
  
She waved at the man, sitting in a chair by the settlement’s workbench in his yellow coat and hat.   
  
“I’m going to grab some booze from my place,” she said. "You don’t need to babysit me, if you’d rather go do something else.”  
  
She trotted along the road to her door, and Charon turned his attention to the man by the curb. He was reading a book, and seemed relatively harmless, but he had still survived the long time in the wasteland, and Charon had learned to be suspicious. He circled around to the settlement’s weapon’s bench, leaning against the wall beside it. He wasn’t sure he trusted this man, and he wanted to keep an eye on him, at least to start with.  
  
Sloan reappeared, with a bottle and a smile.  
  
“Hey. Peter,” she said. “You know what today is?”  
  
The ghoul looked up at her, a little uneasy. “No. What’s today?”  
  
“Today is one year since I unfroze. One year in the post-apocalyptic hellhole that was once the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” She dangled a bottle of something mysterious in front of him. “I’m going to get maudlin-drunk and pretend Leonard Cohen music still exists,” she said. “You in?”  
  
The ghoul blinked, surprised. “Hell yeah, I’m in. I don’t suppose you remember the lyrics to ‘Closing Time’?”  
  
Sloan tilted her head up, and closed her eyes. “ _And my very sweet companion, she’s the angel of compassion, and she’s rubbing half the world against her thigh._ Shit yeah. Let’s do this.” She dropped onto the curb next to him and took a long drink from the bottle, and then passed it up to the man beside her.  
  
“What was it…” He looked at the dark glass contemplatively. “ _Raise a glass_ … um…”  
  
“ _And I lift my glass to the awful truth, that you can’t reveal to the ears of youth —_ ”   
  
“— _except to say it isn’t worth a dime_.” He sighed, and tipped the bottle back. He swallowed, and coughed. “Yeah. It isn’t.” He looked contemplatively down at her for a moment, and then stood, pushing his chair aside and sitting down beside her on the curb. He passed the bottle back.  
  
“You ever think about the vault?” she asked. “I remember you arguing with the guard. I wanted to help but I was too scared to stop.”  
  
“Used to. Was really angry, for a long time. They saved you all and I’m…” He trailed off, and gestured to himself. “Years, I gave to that company. But then they never opened it. The other vaults they opened, and the — the humans came out. Some of them, anyway. But not this one.”  
  
“You were better off.”  
  
“Yeah. Listen, I’m… I’m sorry about your family.”  
  
“I’m sorry about yours.”  
  
He looked off into the distance, and took another mouthful of alcohol. “I had a wife, you know.”  
  
“I didn’t. What happened to her?”  
  
“That’s the…” He sighed, and shook his head. “You know, I never found out. Went back home and there was nothing left.”  
  
“God. I’m sorry.”  
  
They sat drinking in glum silence for a while, until the ghoul jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in Charon’s direction.  
  
“So what’s with tall dark and ugly over there? He the new Nate?”  
  
Sloan turned the bottle around and around in her hands, picking at the remnants of some ancient label.  
  
“Nate is the only Nate,” she said. “He’s my bodyguard, if you must know. But if you’re wondering whether I’m sleeping with him, then yeah.”  
  
“I didn’t mean anything by it. Poor choice of words.”  
  
She smirked at him. “If you want _all_ the details of my sex life, I’m also sleeping with Hancock.”  
  
The ghoul visibly started in a way Charon found deeply satisfying, despite himself. It was a bit annoying, and somewhat bewildering, that the smaller ghoul inspired more fear than he did, but he supposed it was just reputation. His own would build here in time.  
  
“H-hey listen, I didn’t mean any disrespect!”  
  
“I know. Drink your hooch. Leonard Cohen had a long back catalogue.”  
  
Charon left them to it, and wandered off to take a look at the perimeter of the settlement. There was a small jetty out into the river, not far from her house, and his heart lurched a little. Kids would have sat out here, fishing, or pretending to. She might have sat out here too, dangled her feet in the water at sunset. Picnics. Midnight trysts. It bothered him deeply, in a way most of the wasteland rarely had; knowing she had lived here, _here,_ back before the bombs… It made that time seem more real to him. He could picture it. The beauty of the world she had lost, and he had forgotten. If he had ever known it at all.   
  
He frowned, and moved on.  
  
There were a couple of defence spots and a turret along the perimeter, but Sanctuary was in need of some serious work if they planned to keep it defended. One of the defence spots wasn’t even manned. He made some mental notes of improvements that should be made, and by the time he walked back along the road Sloan and the Vault-Tec representative appeared to be considerably more drunk.  
  
They had their arms looped around one another’s shoulders, and they were singing loudly, but, if truth be told, not that badly.  
  
“ _And remember when I moved in you, the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was Haaallelujaaaah! Hallelujah, Hallelujah…”_   
  
Charon bit the inside of his cheek. Sex as a fucking religious experience? Fucking _Christ,_ yes. He’d been imagining a repeat performance every goddamn night since they'd left Diamond City, and he had no idea how to approach her with that. Especially _now,_ when she was all torn up by the world she had lost. There wasn’t much she had said or done since he’d left her for Goodneighbor had suggested to him that it had been any more than a one-time thing. And that was fair, but _fuck,_ was it wrong to want more?   
  
Still… she had said _sleeping with,_ present tense — not that it’d been any of that little turd’s business. That had to count for something. And it wasn’t as if he could have approached her with Valentine travelling with them. That would have been fucking awkward. It was hard enough just being affectionate toward her with someone else around.   
  
The ghoul’s voice broke off mid-verse, and Charon thought Sloan’s voice grew a little stronger, maybe to make up for it. The ghoul had pressed his hands against his eyes, and Sloan was leaning back on one hand, the other holding the bottle aloft.  
  
“ _And it’s not a cry that you hear at night, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujaaah. Hallelujah, hallelujah…_ ”  
  
Charon pulled up a chair under the awning of the old workshop, closed his eyes, and listened to her sing forgotten songs.  
  
She was still a little drunk that night, sitting on the top of some rusted old children’s climbing frame and looking up at the stars. Eventually, Charon leant his elbows on the metal, and brushed the tip of one finger against her knee.  
  
“Smoothskin. It’s late. You planning on sleeping tonight?”  
  
She looked down at him as if she didn’t really see him, and Charon found himself fighting the urge to gather her up and press his face into the curve of her neck. How long had it been since he had felt someone else’s pain as strongly as his own? He ached for her.   
  
“Will you sleep?” she asked, and he straightened, surprised.  
  
“No. No walls here.”  
  
“Codsworth’s on guard duty.”  
  
“No.”  
  
She nodded, and looked back up at the stars, a wave of grief passing over her face.  
  
“Why?” he asked her. He reached for her again, brushing a finger against her elbow.   
  
“I just… I don’t know. It’d be less lonely.”  
  
“You don’t want _me_ in your husband’s bed,” he almost scolded her.  
  
“I trashed that bed. It was ruined.”  
  
“Still…”  
  
“He’s _gone,_ Charon.” She looked down at him with eyes that were dark and haunted by something he couldn’t place.   
  
“I know,” he said at last. “I buried him.”  
  
“He’s been dead for eighty years. He hasn’t been in that room for two hundred and ten. It’s not the same place as it was when he lived there.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Do you?” She sighed. “You can’t go home again, Charon. Time changes things. Time always changes things.”  
  
He rarely wished he could remember things, but if he had some memory of the world before the war, perhaps he could have helped her feel less lonely. No wonder she was fond of Kent and Daisy. Actually _witnessing_ the end of the world, however briefly… Back in Underworld the woman who ran the inn, Carol, had talked about the time after the bombs. How afraid everyone was, driven to madness and wanton violence, people killing each other over scraps of food or coins that no longer had any value. At least Sloan had been spared that. Though, going down into a vault and knowing you might never leave it… that had its own sort of horror.  
  
“Were you scared?” he asked abruptly. “That day, when the bombs fell. Were you scared?”  
  
She paused, blinking at him, and then slowly climbed down the metal frame.   
  
“Yes,” she said, leading the way through the settlement with a slow solemnity. “Both going into the vault and coming out of it. Everything is terrible. You don’t know how terrible it is if you don’t know what it was like before. Everything was different, except the sky. The trees, the way the leaves changed colour in autumn, the buds and blossoms in spring, the little things you’d do every year like put up halloween decorations…” She gestured to a cardboard pumpkin in a nearby window. “Everyone hoped for the best, and prepared for the worst. And then the worst actually happened. I’m not sure any of us thought… You see the bomb hit and you know you’ve just seen a million people get vapourised. And then you find people who _lived through it_. There are people who somehow survived the air igniting and they’re still walking around two hundred years later.” She shook her head. “That’s not right. That can’t be right, can it? Maybe we all died and this is hell.”  
  
“If we all died, then where is Nate?”  
  
“Nate went to heaven.” She paused on the threshold of her ancient house. “And I didn’t, because I’m…”  
  
He grabbed her arm and turned her back around to face him.  
  
“Don’t talk shit,” he told her. “You would go to heaven. Of _all people,_ smoothskin, come on.”  
  
She gave him a sad, sweet smile, and reached for him, standing on tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck.  
  
“I don’t really believe in heaven,” she said, her head resting against his chest. “Nor in hell. I don’t think the universe cares that much about what we do. If it cared, it would have done something to stop it. You can’t let people destroy the world if you actually care about actions, about good and bad, about joy and pain.” She sighed. “We’re all alone down here, Charon.”  
  
 _We have each other,_ he thought but did not say. It sounded far too sappy, even in his head. Instead he threaded the fingers of one hand into her hair, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.  
  
She let him hold her, just for a moment, and then she slipped from his arms and took his hand to lead him down the hall.  
  
It felt wrong to lie in that room, in that bed. This wasn’t where he was meant to be. That dresser — had she picked that out with her husband? What about that painting? They’d bought their home and filled it with the things they loved, furniture, art. She’d been pregnant here, brought her baby home to a nursery all his own. Laid in this room with her husband and made plans they would never get to carry out.  
  
He waited until he was sure she was sleeping, and slipped away. Her bedroom had been boarded up, but the other rooms in this house had windows and gaps in the walls, and he moved through the house checking the darkness beyond. He could not feel safe here, regardless of how many people were standing guard, and by his reckoning there were far too few.   
  
An hour or so after midnight he heard movement down the hall and looked up just as she cried out.   
  
“Charon?! Charon!”  
  
“What is it?” He hovered in the doorway, one hand on his gun. She had switched on her pip-boy light but he could still barely make out her face in the dark.  
  
“You weren’t here.”  
  
“I was standing watch.”  
  
She rubbed a hand across her face. “I thought you would be here,” she said. “I woke up and… and I was disoriented.”  
  
“Bad dream?” He walked over to sit on the end of her bed.  
  
“No,” she said. “No dreams. I just... I was confused. I thought I’d imagined you.”  
  
“You couldn’t imagine someone better looking?”   
  
She huffed a laugh, and rubbed at her face again. “I know I’m being a clingy limpet,” she said, “but would you lie with me again? Just for a little while.You don’t have to, just tell me to fuck off or whatever.”  
  
He set his gun down on the bedside table, kicked off his boots, and slid into bed beside her. It hadn’t yet become natural to him to reach out and pull her up against his side, but she fitted herself into his arms as if she had done so all her life.   
  
She clicked off the light on her pip-boy, and sighed to herself.   
  
“You’re all stiff,” she said. “You don’t have to be here if it makes you uncomfortable.”  
  
“You want me here.”  
  
“Yes, but I also don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”  
  
“It is the room,” he admitted. “Your… He…”  
  
“I think you put him on a pedestal in your head,” she said, sounding a little amused. “The man from before the war. Big handsome soldier, or whatever. He was a good man. A very good man. He was thoughtful and genuine and he believed in helping others, and the war took a lot from him. His innocence, his peace of mind. A lot of friends.” She paused, her breath cool against his skin. “You know, he would have liked you.”  
  
Charon made a scoffing noise, and she pulled herself a little closer.  
  
“He would have. Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I had been holding Shaun, instead of him. If _he_ had lived. What he would have thought of this world, what he would have done.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Probably not slept with Hancock,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Maybe slept with you, though.”  
  
Charon almost choked.  
  
“You are teasing me.”  
  
“No. You’re kind of his type. Big and tough, with a sadness in you. Plus there’s that ass.” She hummed a little laugh to herself. “He wouldn’t be angry, killer. He’d be glad there was someone who looked out for me and kept me safe. Anyway, not like he could talk; he had a boyfriend.”  
  
Charon stared up at the ceiling, and cleared his throat.  
  
“Do you miss him?”  
  
“Of course I miss him.” She shifted, resting her head against his shoulder. “Even now I’ll see something interesting and want to tell him all about it. He’d love the Slog. The first time I found that place, that’s all I could think about. How much he’d love what they were doing, how much he’d want to help.”  
  
“You think of him often.”  
  
She made a soft little scolding noise. “I was married to him for five years,” she said. “Of course I do. In my head he’s only been gone for…” She hesitated. “No, that’s wrong. There was time. I knew there was time, between when they killed him, and when I woke up again. There was a gap. Like when you’re under anaesthesia, and there’s nothing, no dreams, but when you wake up you know that time has passed. But still… it feels like it wasn’t so long ago, for me. I think about him at least once a day. Less, now, than I used to. Now it’s just when the sun sets, or before I fall asleep, or when I see something that reminds me of him.”  
  
Charon let his fingers stroke along her side. “Would you have been happy, if your vault had been like one of the others?”  
  
“I’d be long dead by now, if it was.”  
  
“I know. But you would have had a safe life. With your family.”  
  
“No. I couldn’t have stayed down there. Even Vault 81… it’s horrible down there. Sterile, oppressive. It was terrifying, going down into the vault. I thought I’d never see the sky again. No… I would have tried to leave, as soon as it was safe. Nate might have tried to talk me out of it, that it would be safer inside for Shaun, but he was always more conservative than me, when it came to that sort of thing. That’s why he was officer material, and I wasn’t.”  
  
“You are my officer,” he pointed out.   
  
“That’s true. Do you think you were ever in the military?”  
  
“There were times I wondered,” he admitted. He shifted a little, curling his arm tighter around her and resting his cheek against her hair. “Sloan?”  
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“Are you unhappy?”  
  
There was a pause, and then she sighed.  
  
“No. Charon, sweetling, don’t take how I feel today as evidence of anything.” She lifted her hand to rest it against his chest. “I’m sad today. I might be sad tomorrow. But I’m not unhappy. I know I talk a lot about the things I miss, but there are things I don’t. We did this to ourselves, remember. Pollution and torture and cruelty and war. All the experiments Vault-tec were running… I heard about a vault where there was only one woman, and a hundred men. Can you imagine what they did to her? To each other? Vault-tec wanted to see that, or someone did, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if the bombs weren’t meant to wipe the world clean of us. The pre-war ghouls and I… we all remember the good things, the things that remind us of when we were safe, when things were easier. How beautiful the natural world was, for all we were slowly destroying it. But it’s rose-tinted glasses. Childhood naivety. Life was never easy, and the world was never safe. It was greener, that’s all.”  
  
“I don’t blame you for missing it,” he told her. “It may not have been safe and happy, but it was better than this place. And you had your family then.”  
  
“I have a family now,” she said. “It’s just a different one. And a little more dysfunctional.” She was quiet for a moment, her breathing slow and hushed. “Charon?”  
  
“Yes, mistress?”  
  
“Thank you for asking.”

 

 


	50. Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

  
Her day of mourning had done her good. After the last week or so it was like a weight had lifted from her shoulders, and she led the way out of Sanctuary Hills humming a cheerful song to herself.   
  
Naturally, the wasteland did its best to ensure her good mood did not last.  
  
They reached the settlement at dusk, the shadows growing long as the sun dipped low in the sky. They were past the defences before they realised anything was wrong.  
  
There had been only three settlers in this settlement, and now they were dead, their bodies bloody and ragged beside the firepit. Birds were picking at the eyes of one corpse, and took flight as they approached.   
  
Sloan sank to her knees, and stared at the bodies.   
  
“You knew them?” Charon asked her, and she nodded stiffly.  
  
“I helped them out a few times. Ferals, raiders. Traded with them. They were good people.” Her jaw was tight. “I don’t want to stay here tonight.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“We’ll — I don’t know. Bury them, I guess. Burn them. This was a good settlement, someone might still live here one day. Tomorrow, though. I can’t deal with it tonight.”  
  
“If you wish, mistress.”  
  
She sighed, and rubbed at her forehead with one hand. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to shelter before it starts to rain.”  
  
They found a cave just as the first raindrops fell, and she turned her face up to the sky.   
  
“I’ll gather some wood,” she said. “You want to make sure there aren’t any bugs in that cave? I haven’t come across any giant spiders yet, but I wouldn’t put it past the wasteland.”  
  
“I will gather wood,” he told her, dropping his pack onto the floor of the cave and reaching for hers. “You stay dry.”  
  
Irritation flashed across her face. “I said I’ll find the damn wood, Charon.”  
  
He straightened in surprise, but she had already turned away, heading out into the growing darkness with her rifle in her hands.   
  
He went through reasons for her anger in his mind as he checked the cave for threats. Pain? Was she menstruating? He didn’t keep track and she rarely mentioned it unless it truly bothered her. Or had he done something to annoy her? Said something?  
  
She should have just ordered him to stay here. He wouldn’t have questioned an order; if she used one, she meant it.   
  
It was nearly dark by the time she returned, hunched over slightly to keep the wood from getting wet. Charon had gathered some sticks and tinder, and he took the wood from her and bent to light the fire.   
  
Her hair was plastered to her face. She unbuckled her pip-boy so she could shuck off her jacket, and set the computer aside. Charon settled on the ground, across the fire from her, and watched the firelight on her face.   
  
“You should have just given me an order, if it was important to you,” he told her. “If you want me to do something, mistress, _tell_ me, don’t ask me.”  
  
She sighed, and reached up to rub her face with a fisted hand. Rainwater dripped from her hair.  
  
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’m upset about the settlement. I just needed some time to clear my head.”  
  
“Did I say something, or —”  
  
“No, no, it wasn’t anything to do with you. Not your fault. I’ve been an emotional disaster this week, and the settlement just pushed me over the edge.” She looked down at her boots, picking at her laces, and took a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Yes. You can ask me anything. Smoothskin, you should know that by now.” He risked the ghost of a smile. “I will not always have an answer that satisfies, but…”  
  
“Yeah, I know.” She kept toying with her laces, a lop-sided smile on her face. “I was just wondering if things were okay between us.”  
  
“I — what?”  
  
“It’s just that you haven’t made a move in a while.” She looked up at him through her lashes. “I know it’s been a weird few weeks, and I-I’m not pressuring you, I mean, if you don’t want to that’s fine. I know the bruises scared you.”  
  
He stared at her. “You want…” He cleared his throat.   
  
“You, yes. Again.” She smiled at him. “You thought I didn’t? You’ve been… I mean, I know you’re not big on touching, but…”  
  
He huffed a sigh that was nearly a laugh, and pushed his hand back through his hair. “I have no idea how to — you’re saying I should just — just kiss you whenever I want? Just grab you and…”  
  
She shrugged. “I mean, use your better judgement, but sure.”  
  
“My _better judgement_ says not to do it at all,” he said bluntly.   
  
She looked almost hurt, and he realised with a jolt she might take that the wrong way.   
  
“Not because I — because I don’t _desire_ you. I do, of course I do. But…”  
  
“Is it the human thing, or the employer thing…? O-or…”  
  
“Both. You are too good for me, and you are…” He struggled, unable to put into words quite how the role of employer loomed in his mind. “…You are _everything,_ in my head. I told you that before. It is hard to cross that line. Besides, we have been on the road for weeks. First with Valentine, and after that the only bed we’ve been near was the one in Sanctuary, and that…”  
  
“We don’t need a bed. What’s wrong with a good sturdy wall?”  
  
“A _wall?_ You deserve a bed,” he said stubbornly, and she laughed.  
  
“I got knocked up in the park!” She smirked at him, and crawled around the fire to sit beside him. “Listen. I’m a woman with needs. Beds are not among those needs. Sex is. It’s been ages and I need to… I don’t know. To de-stress, to tell death to fuck off. There’s been too much of it lately.” She eyed him, and bit her lip. “You don’t have to, I mean, you know — I hope — that I’d never _ever_ want you to do something you weren't comfortable with or to feel like I was ordering you to — ”  
  
He cut her off with a kiss, hard and hungry, his hand sliding behind her head. It had been _weeks_ and he had spent too many nights since watching her across the campfire and wondering whether she’d ever touch him that way again. He would have been content to know that one night was all he got, content to keep that memory forever. She was sparing with her touch and with her kisses, and he had wondered if it had been a one time thing, if he had not understood, if she had decided it was all too complicated. And all along she had been waiting of _him_ to make the goddamn move. As if he had any idea how to do that. Just kiss her? Whenever he wanted?   
  
He growled, deep in the back of his throat. This was not a good freedom for her to give him. He was greedy and he would take far, far too much advantage of this.  
  
She broke the kiss and pulled back, gasping for breath.  
  
“Okay,” she said, “so we’re on the same page.”  
  
“You want me?” He pulled her into his lap, and with her thigh pressing against his crotch there was no way she could mistake what he was asking.  
  
“God, yes,” she breathed.   
  
He turned her in his arms, pulling her back up against his chest. He locked his lips onto the side of her neck as one hand drifted up under her shirt to cup her breast through the fabric of her bra. With the other, he popped the button on her pants and reached down, brushing his thumb down along the outside of her underwear. She let out a groan, and dropped her head back onto his shoulder. Her panties were damp, and all thought of taking his time fled. He pushed the material aside, and slipped his index finger between her folds.  
  
She arched against him, whimpering.   
  
“Impatient woman,” he growled against her neck.   
  
“Tease,” she accused.   
  
“Is that an order?” he chuckled, stilling his hands on her.  
  
“ _God, no._ ”  
  
“I didn’t think it was.”   
  
He pressed his finger into her, and smeared her wetness up and over her clit. With his other hand he pushed up her bra so he could pinch her hard nipple between finger and thumb, and he heard the breath hiss through her teeth. It was still her responsiveness that astounded him the most, the way she moved under his hands, the noises she made, the quickness of her breath. He circled his thumb over her nub and was rewarded by a deep, throaty moan.  
  
She slipped her hand up to the back of his neck, as much for leverage as to touch him, and then she turned her head to kiss his throat. She sucked his skin between her lips, but then he pressed his fingers into her, curling them against the front wall of her cunt, and she broke off with a cry.  
  
“ _Fffffuck,_ I love your hands. _God_.”  
  
He kissed across her shoulder to the back of her neck, slipping his hand from her panties to unbutton her blouse and pull it from her shoulders. He dropped it to the ground, and she turned in his arms, her fingers picking at the buckles of his armour. After a moment she let out a huff of irritation.  
  
“Why do these things have to be so _finicky?_ ”   
  
Charon bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the way her face screwed up in frustration.   
  
“Why do it, then?” he asked her. “I will only have to put them on again later.”  
  
“Because I —” She paused, and met his eyes. “Don’t you like it, when I touch you?”  
  
He snorted a laugh. “Of course I do, smoothskin. The only thing I like better is touching _you_.”  
  
“And the sooner I get this off you, the sooner you can get back to doing that. And believe me, I want that more than you do.”  
  
That was fair. He let her work, and when the final buckle had been loosened he pulled the chest piece over his shoulders and dropped it to the ground.   
  
“Is the mistress satisfied?” he asked her.  
  
“Oh, it’ll take a lot of work to satisfy me tonight,” she said, tugging on the hem of his shirt.   
  
He pulled it up over his head, tossing it over with hers, and then reached for the straps of her bra. She let him slide them down over her shoulders as she reached behind herself for the clasp, and then she was bare, her arms sliding around his neck, her lips finding his.  
  
It was hard to get his hands back down her pants at this angle. That was going to be a problem. He was going to ask her to turn, but her mouth on his was hot and sweet, and then he felt her fingers at his belt, and her hand slipped into his underwear.  
  
 _Fuck._ Maybe he’d been lying earlier, when he said he liked touching her better. There was fucking nothing like her hand on him.  
  
He pulled back, her breath hot on his face.  
  
“Smoothskin,” he said, “ _fuck_. If you keep doing that I’m going to come all over your hand.”  
  
She gave him a crooked smile.   
  
“I was kind of hoping you’d come somewhere else,” she said, and squeezed him gently.  
  
He groaned, and bent his head to kiss his way down the side of her throat.   
  
“Rad-X,” he growled against her neck. “If you want me inside you…”  
  
“Oh, fuck. Good idea.”  
  
She climbed out of his lap, and for a brief, ridiculous moment Charon regretted mentioning it. He felt the lack of her in his arms, and scolded himself. Still… as he watched her slip around the fire and crouch to dig through her pack, he indulged in the sensation of an almost predatory hunger. He wanted her.   
  
She slipped a pill into her mouth, and the sight of her throat moving as she swallowed was more arousing than it should be. Fuck. If they kept doing this, then eventually the sight of her taking rad-X was going to turn him on all by itself. It was beyond erotic to watch her prepare herself for him like that.   
  
He intercepted her on her way back around the fire, catching her hips in both hands and holding her for a moment before he slid her pants down over her thighs to pool at her feet. He hooked a finger into the delicate material of her panties, and felt the foolish urge to rip them. Instead she slipped them off, kicking them aside, and kissed his chest as she slid her hand back into his underwear.  
  
“What did I say, smoothskin?” He closed his hand around her wrist. “I don’t want to come just yet.”  
  
He tugged at her wrist, turning her, and released her hand to pull her back up against him. His hand trailed down her taut belly to slide between her folds, and she tilted her head back, her eyes closed, lip caught between her teeth.  
  
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, fingers brushing over her nub as he withdrew his hand to see the moisture glimmer in the firelight. “Down onto your knees,” he said, and pressed gently on her shoulder.   
  
She sank to the cave floor, and he followed, sliding one hand down over the curve of her waist and then pushing her forward onto her hands and knees. God, what a fucking sight. Naked and perfect, wetness glistening between her thighs, looking over her shoulder at him with her hair falling across her face. His cock was straining against the fabric of his pants and he pulled it free, running his hand along his length and circling his thumb over the head. God, she looked good. Those hips, fucking Christ… this position was high on his list of fantasies. But with all she was to him, all she meant, fucking her like a dog on the floor of some cave…   
  
“You want this, smoothskin?” He reached out to run his hand over the curve of her ass. “Here? Like this?”  
  
“You have to ask?” she breathed. “Yes. I want you everywhere, fuck — I want — I want —”   
  
She made a sound of frustration, shifting her hips, and he grasped her with both hands and moved forward. His erection nudged against her entrance, and the silken wetness of her, fuck. He pushed into her, and he couldn’t stop a growl of pleasure at how fucking tight she was. He bucked his hips, and she made a soft sound somewhere between pleasure and alarm.  
  
“Christ, I forgot how fucking big you are,” she breathed. “God damnit.”  
  
He cursed himself, laying a hand on her back.  
  
“Did I hurt you?”  
  
“No, Charon, fuck you feel good.”  
  
She pushed back against him, moaning, and he took the hint. She didn’t want slow tonight, and nor did he. The sight of her cunt swallowing his cock was too much, and he let himself trust her to know what she could handle. He pressed himself inside her to the hilt, his thighs slapped against hers as he fucked her. His mind was a disjointed mess of pleasure, of endearments mixed with expletives. _Fuck_ she was perfect. _Fuck._  
  
Her hips beneath his hands were firm, warm, glowing in the firelight. He bent to kiss his way up her spine, growling softly as she clenched around him. He wanted to bite into her shoulder but he wasn’t sure he could, he didn’t want to bruise her again, so he settled for grazing his teeth across her skin.   
  
She was making those soft, needy noises that short-circuited his brain, and he knew he was far too close. He reached down beneath her to circle her clit with his fingers and moments later she clenched hard around him, her strangled cry sending him over the edge. He grunted as he found his release, his hand tightening on her hip, and as he came down from his peak he bent to press a kiss between her shoulderblades.  
  
When he slipped out of her she pushed herself up onto her knees, and he looped an arm around her waist, pressing a kiss against her shoulder.  
  
“Perfect,” he rasped, and she made a pleased little humming sound.  
  
He pulled her down with him onto the cave floor. She curled up against his chest, and they lay together as their breathing slowed. He ran a hand through her damp hair, cradling her head as he pulled her closer for a kiss.  
  
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “God. I really needed that.”  
  
“You’re thanking _me?_ ” He chuckled, tracing his fingers up her side and down the back of her arm. “I still cannot work out why you let me touch you. No other human would.”  
  
She lifted her head a little to look at him. Her lips were a deep pink and he wanted to kiss her again.   
  
“Same reason you let me touch you, I guess,” she said.  
  
“That seems unlikely.”  
  
She leant forward and eased her mouth over his, slow and deliberate, and when she broke away she studied his face a moment before getting up to retrieve her clothes.  
  
“Because you make me feel good,” she said, bending for her underwear. “Because I enjoy it when you touch me. Because I love you. Because I feel safe with you.”  
  
“You _love_ me?” Charon staggered to his feet. He stared at her for a moment until she tossed him his shirt. He dropped it to the ground, and held out his arms to her. “Smoothskin. Come here so I can kiss you.”  
  
She did so, still only half-dressed, and he swooped her up into his arms.  
  
“No one has ever loved me before,” he said, pressing a kiss against her temple.   
  
“Just because you don’t remember it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”  
  
“It may as well.”  
  
He kissed her again, still marvelling that he could do so. No one had loved him before, he had never expected to be loved, not even by her. He was feeling too many emotions all at once, and he tried to push them aside, to focus on _her,_ the weight of her in his arms, the warmth of her, the softness of her lips.  
  
When he at last pulled away, he pressed his forehead to hers just for a moment, and then sank down onto the ground beside the fire with her still in his arms. She had wound her arms around his neck, and this, sitting with her half-naked by the fire, all lean muscle and long limbs… this was something he had no right to, some great and unimaginable gift that he had difficulty letting himself believe. He kissed his way down her throat, and nuzzled into the crook of her neck.  
  
“Can I keep you?” he rasped against her throat.   
  
She chuckled. “Of course you can keep me, love. I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours forever. For as long as you’ll have me.”  
  
He was beginning to understand why Hancock wanted to turn her into a ghoul. One day she would grow old and die, as all humans did, and while it would be torture to stand by and watch her as her skin fell off it would be better than have her die on him. If he could _keep_ her, if there was no _after Sloan,_ if… no. He shouldn’t think about the future. He knew better. He should enjoy what he had, while he had it, however long that would be.  
  
He sighed, and raised his head. “What will I do when you are gone?” he wondered aloud.   
  
She rested her head against his shoulder, and looked up at him with her large hazel eyes.  
  
“Remember me fondly?”  
  
“I hope so. I-I don’t want to forget.” He tightened his arms around her. He had forgotten so much. “I don’t want to forget you.”  
  
Her lips twitched into a soft smile. “Do you think if I order you to remember me, you’ll have to do it?”  
  
He smiled, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.   
  
“It is a sweet idea, beauty. But when you die, so do your orders.”  
  
She had started running her hand from his chest down to his stomach and back again, along the ridges of his skin, drifting lower each time. He kissed her again, if only to distract her from it.   
  
“Smoothskin,” he growled, “I’m over a hundred years old. Give me a minute or two.”  
  
“So am I,” she said, chuckling.  
  
“You don’t count.”   
  
He caught her wandering hand, and kissed the pale skin at the inside of her wrist. He flashed to the first week he had met her, impossibly long ago, when he had looked at that stretch of flawless skin and wondered what it would look like up against his own. He tilted his head to one side as he examined his torn fingers wrapped around her forearm. It didn’t seem so wrong, his skin against hers. Tragic, but not hideous.  
  
She rested her head back against his shoulder, and followed his gaze.   
  
“Will you still want me if I turn ghoul one day?” she asked. “If all my hair falls out and my nose collapses?”  
  
“Better ghoul than dead,” he said. “But if you try to turn ghoul, there is always the risk it won’t work. Trust me, it is not a good way to die.”  
  
“Yeah. I know. It’ll be a last resort.” She sighed, her breath warm against his neck. “Don’t think I don’t understand what it’ll mean for you when I die. There’s Nick and there’s Hancock, but there’s no guarantee they’ll live as long as you will and no guarantee they’ll be the ones there to get your contract when the time comes.” She set her jaw. “I told Hancock, about… about what will happen to you if someone else gets it. He said he’ll hunt them down and take it back.”  
  
“No. Mistress, I will have to defend my employer.” It was a nice thought, but the idea of trying to kill Hancock disturbed him more than he would have expected.   
  
“I know. He knows. We’ve talked about it. He knows what he’s doing.”  
  
Charon frowned at her. “This is not a game. I will kill him.”  
  
“He understands that.” She ran her finger along the line of his jaw, and brushed her thumb across his ragged lips. “This isn’t the sort of thing I can talk him out of, and he’d get angry at me if I tried.”  
  
He blinked at her in surprise. “You didn’t ask him to do this?”  
  
“No. I told him about what would happen, and he decided on his own.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“You know what he’s like. Freedom, and all that.” She smirked at him. “It’s not just empty platitudes. He actually means all that stuff.”  
  
“He will get himself killed.”  
  
“Oh, ye of little faith.” She grinned at him, reaching down to brush her fingers across his hip. “Now, should I go and put my clothes back on, or will you just tear them off again?”  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rubs forehead* The sex scene needs some editing, I think. I might come back and fix it later. I need more practice with sex scenes. Happily, or unhappily, depending on your preferences, there is a section a ways in the future that is like... 4 chapters of sex. And then they switch location, and there's more sex. In fact I'm not even sure what the plot's going to be after that point, I just got bogged down in all the sex. 
> 
> LOOK it's part of Charon's emotional journey, OKAY??


	51. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EMOTIONS

“Will you show me D.C. one day?” she asked him afterwards.  
  
They were lying on the cave floor by the fire. Their second coupling had been slower, more languid, but no less intense. She had pulled out her sleeping bag, spread it out over the ground, and straddled his hips. He had found he liked it more than he’d expected when she had control, when she took what she wanted from him. There was nothing better than looking up at her in the firelight, her lip caught between her teeth as she rode his dick. Now she lay with her head on his chest, one leg hooked around his. Charon’s fingers were tracing the curve of her waist, over and over, and he didn’t think he had ever been so purely content.  
  
“You want to go sight-seeing?” he smirked at her. “See the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial?”  
  
She smiled back, and waved a hand airily. “I mean, sure, if you want to show them to me. But I saw all the monuments and stuff before the war. My brother’s buried at Arlington, so… Y’know. We went for the funeral, and might as well see the sights while you’re there, right? Though it’d be interesting, to see how they’d changed. To be honest I’m more interested in seeing that ghoul settlement. And MacCready’s kid lives around D.C. somewhere.”  
  
“MacCready has a _child?_ ”  
  
She chuckled. “Yeah, to be honest, that was my first reaction too. He has a son, a year or two old. He was sick, and we found this thing in some feral-infested hospital that MacCready thought would cure it. Daisy sent it off with some traders she knew. I’m cynical enough that I’m fairly sure he’s dead, and no one’s told him. But if not… it’d be nice, to go on a roadtrip. Check on the kid. He’s the reason MacCready wants to be a better person. Anyway, I was just… just thinking that one day I’d like to see the place. See what happened to other cities. Sometimes I feel like this is a little pocket universe, a dream world.”  
  
“D.C. is difficult to navigate. Roads blocked by fallen buildings. Most people travel through the metro lines. Ferals down there, and raiders. Many of the settlements are outside D.C.”  
  
“What are they like?”  
  
“One is built in a ship, an aircraft carrier. Rivet City. They do not like ghouls there. Another, Megaton, built around an unexploded bomb. They do not like ghouls either, but they are… less vocal about it.”  
  
“That can’t be safe. The bomb, I mean.”  
  
He shrugged. “The Wanderer disarmed it, but I don’t doubt it is still dangerous.” He curled his hand around her hip, shifting her a little closer. “There was a ghoul there. He worked in the bar. A slave.”  
  
“A whole new world full of wrongs to right,” she mused. “Why didn’t the Wanderer help him? He liked to help people, right?”  
  
“I think he wanted to, but he couldn’t work out how. Not without killing the man who owned him.”  
  
“See, I’d have no problem with that.”  
  
“That is why I like you best.”  
  
She made a pleased sort of sound, and nuzzled up against his chest in a way he found deeply satisfying.  
  
“Will you tell me more about Underworld?” she asked him. “What was it like? What are the people like? How did it feel to leave the place, after thirty years?”  
  
“Strange. Exhilarating. My employer would send me out to fetch things for him but it was… different. I do not know how to put it into words.” He looked down at her; her eyes were closed, her thumb tracing along a ridge in his skin. “I have told you that there are chains?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
He paused, searching for a way to explain it.  
  
“Before a new employer touches the contract, the contract is all there is. I don’t usually have time to appreciate it; the orders are too powerful. But there is _no employer,_ there is no… _weight_. When the employer touches the contract, I can feel it. Pressure. Chains. The employer is everything. Perhaps I imagine it, but I think each employer has a different… a different _flavour_.”  
  
“Flavour?” She giggled.  
  
“I don’t know how else to explain it. The chains are no less heavy, it _feels_ no different, and yet… When I stepped through that door with the Wanderer it _was_ different, from all the times before. The chains were different.”  
  
“You’re a very philosophical person, for someone who shoots other people for a living,” she said.  
  
“I have had a lot of time to think.”  
  
“So… what flavour did I have?”  
  
“Not _actual flavour,_ ” he said to her. “You did not feel like mutfruit, or vanilla.” He saw the sparkle in her eyes, and realised she was teasing him.  
  
“But was I different?” she said.  
  
“No. Not in the way you mean. I had no way to know you would not be like the others.”  
  
“If someone took the contract off me, you’d go straight from one set of chains to the other, right?”  
  
“Correct.”  
  
“But you would be able to tell, even if neither of us — me or the other person — were around.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“The chains would feel different?”  
  
“Yes. Additionally, if someone takes it from you, I would need to go to them. And all your old orders would have dropped.”  
  
“Are there any?” Sloan pushed herself up a little to look down at him, surprised. “Any ongoing orders?”  
  
“Nothing significant. Just echoes that linger. To wake you, if there is a rad storm… that sort of thing.”  
  
She settled down beside him again, her head on his chest.  
  
“So… say this person who took the contract gave it back again. Before you could come to us. You’d know it was passing from person to person, but would you know the second person was me? Would they be new chains, or the same ones as before?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I am not sure this has happened before.”  
  
“I was just wondering if you would recognise me. Recognise my flavour.” There was a little crease between her eyebrows as she thought. “I think I’d like it, if you did.”  
  
“I hope it will never be an issue.” He slid his hand down her side, the swell of her hip. “You really love me?” he asked.  
  
“Silly. I’ve loved you a long time. I decided I was going to back at Abernathy farm.”  
  
He scoffed. “You barely knew me then.”  
  
“I knew you didn’t have a person, and that you needed one. So I decided it would be me.”  
  
“You can’t _decide_ to love people.”  
  
She made an amused sound. “Oh, really? Well in that case, I’ll stop.”  
  
He tightened his arm around her. “No, I… I didn’t…”  
  
She laughed, bending her head to press a kiss to his collarbone. “I won’t. Stopping’s a lot harder than starting, anyway.”  
  
Yes. He knew that.  
  
“Did you decide to love Hancock? Or Nate?”  
  
“Nate… I don’t know. Yes, I think I did. But not the same way. More like… I could see it coming, I knew he was a guy I could fall in love with. I could have ended things with him before then, if I’d wanted to avoid it, but I was happy. It was something I wanted. Hancock, though…” She snorted. “You have to remember, I was only a couple weeks out of the vault when I met him. It all took shape very differently. I didn’t choose to love him… it was more like waking up tied to the train tracks with a locomotive steaming towards me.”  
  
“That sounds painful.”  
  
“Well, that’s love for you.”  
  
“It’s meant to be painful? I thought that was just me.”  
  
She laughed. “No, it’s not just you.” She rubbed her thumb along a ridge of his skin, a smile tugging on the corner of her lips. “So… am I to take it from that question that you love me back?”  
  
A jolt ran through him, and his hand tightened on her hip.  
  
“I didn’t tell you that? I meant — I meant to tell you that. Many times.”  
  
“It’s all right —”  
  
“No, it — _Christ,_ smoothskin.” He wrapped his other arm around her to pull her closer, and pressed his lips against her hair. “You’re the whole world to me. How can I not have told you that?”  
  
“You made it pretty obvious that you cared,” she told him. “You didn’t need to say it.” She paused, and dipped her head to press a kiss against his chest. “You really didn’t know I loved you?”  
  
“Of course not. Why would you?”  
  
“Oh, Charon.” She chuckled. “God, maybe I should have just said that from the start. ‘I’m planning on loving you, so get used to the idea’. Or something.”  
  
“I would have been suspicious.”  
  
“Shocker.” She smirked at him. “You know, it was hard to get to know you, in the beginning. You didn’t give a lot of yourself. I understood why, but I still kept trying to open you up. It seems so arrogant of me, now I think back, but I was afraid if I never pried you’d just stay locked up in your head. I’d never get to know you at all. And that seemed like such a tragedy to me.”  
  
He remembered her picking at his mind, the night after they’d buried her husband. Trying to find out who he was so she could love him. He’d lashed out at her for it, and now he wondered if he would have done so, then, if he’d known she was trying to love him.  
  
He would have considered that an impossible thing. Probably he would have been wiser, and not let himself get too close to her. If he had known, if he had been forewarned.  
  
And maybe she would still have loved him anyway.  
  
“You thought so much of me, and you didn’t even know me. Why would it have been a tragedy?”  
  
“Well, you were intriguing. A mystery.” She smiled. “I _wanted_ to know you. Here’s this guy who’s programmed to obey, for whom protecting me is the most important thing in the world, and he might not even _like_ me. This person who could have lived two hundred years, and he has a whole world in his head I can’t reach. It was interesting, to be able trust to someone so much without knowing them. I wanted to unpick you. But then I also wanted to give you space because you were walking around like this… I don’t know how to explain it. Hard, but… bruised. There are all these little things — I’m used to them now, they’re just part of what makes up _Charon,_ but at the time I’d notice something and get angry about it. About whoever had programmed a little flinch into you, had made it so that you responded a certain way.”  
  
“I didn’t realise that,” he said, his forehead furrowing. “I flinch?”  
  
“Sometimes. Not as much, any more.” She was quiet for a moment, tracing her finger up and down an exposed vein. “I wanted very much for you to like me, you know.”  
  
“I did,” he said. “I thought you were strange, but… you were a good employer.” He huffed a laugh at himself. “It was too easy to like you. I had to keep telling myself that you were crazy, and I should keep my guard up.”  
  
“Why crazy?”  
  
“The smoothskin thinks she’s two hundred years old, talking about army tours and law school.”  
  
“Oh!” She smiled to herself. “I’d forgotten about that.”  
  
“And she _kisses ghouls_. No smoothskin kisses ghouls.”  
  
Sloan laughed at that, and pushed herself up on her elbow to kiss him.  
  
“Well, maybe I am a _little_ crazy.”  
  
“That was my final assessment.”  
  
He cupped her cheek with one hand, stroking his thumb against her skin. To think he could have spent every night of the last two weeks like this, curled up with her, if only he’d known he could.  
  
“Why did you wait?” he asked her abruptly.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“You waited for me. To kiss you.”  
  
“I told you, _you_ should make all the moves. You’ve spent so long being someone else’s pawn… It’s important that you have some bodily autonomy. As much as I can give you.”  
  
“I appreciate that you think of things like that, beauty, but…” He huffed a sigh. “How would I have known? I thought you did not want me.”  
  
She coloured, and lowered her head to press her forehead to his chest.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I’ve been in my head, lately. I wasn’t paying enough attention. And I didn’t want to push you. You were —” She cut herself off, and sighed, raising her head to look at him. “That first night we spent together… you were so upset, the next morning. I thought maybe you were distancing yourself.”  
  
“Why would _I_ touch _you,_ if you didn’t ask for it?” he said. “Ghouls are horrific things, monsters. I am not used to being _wanted._ You understand?”  
  
“Charon. You know you’re not a monster.”  
  
“Beauty, _look_ at me.” He cupped her cheek again, and traced his thumb around the corner of her lips. “I know _you_ think I'm not a monster, but… Please. I am not good at this. You can kiss me without asking. I want you to.” He hesitated. “It will reassure me that you are not coming to your senses.” He could see the corner of her lips curve into a smile, as she turned her face to press a kiss against his palm. “You read me well,” he said. “And I will tell you if you cross a line. I will say no. I know you would want me to say no.”  
  
She sighed, and gave him a sad sort of smile. “You promise?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“All right, then.” Her smile grew, and the sadness disappeared. “Where do you stand on public displays of affection? I’ve been operating under the assumption that they’d make you uncomfortable.”  
  
“I would feel like people were looking at me,” he admitted.  
  
“And you’re not Hancock. You’re not so keen on that sort of attention.”  
  
“They would — I am not —” He took a deep breath. “I am used to hiding things. Because… employers would disapprove.”  
  
“Well, I have some good news. I’ve talked to your employer, and she’s cool with it.”  
  
He snorted. “No, smoothskin. I mean I’ll be checking over my shoulder in case someone… does not want me touching you. You know there are places in the Commonwealth that would take exception to it.”  
  
“I know. I was only playing.”  
  
“You know what they would do to me, if they found out that I’d touched you?”  
  
She pushed herself off the ground and sat up, looking down at him with an expression somewhere between sadness and irritation.  
  
“Sweetling. As if I’d let them hurt you. As if _you’d_ let them hurt you.”  
  
“It is hard to fight a mob,” he explained, his eyes wandering over the roof of the cave, and the shadows playing there. “All it takes is one person who is brave enough to attack, and the rest will follow. They lose their minds, like gangs of ferals. Have you seen a mob? There are too many, they grab your arms, your weapons, drag them away. There are always two more to replace anyone you kill. Vicious, mindless. Worse than ferals, sometimes. Ferals cannot hate.” He glanced back over at her, and with a dark stab of shock he caught the look on her face and remembered too late that this was the sort of thing he shouldn’t mention to the mistress. The mistress had _imagination._  
  
She held his gaze just for a moment, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed. Then she swept the sleeping bag aside and went in search of the rest of her clothes. To hide her face, to get away from him. He pushed himself up off the stone floor and went after her.  
  
“Beauty…”  
  
“I wouldn’t let them hurt you,” she said again.  
  
“I know you wouldn’t.”  
  
She pulled her shirt over her shoulders and turned back to him.  
  
“There’s no way I’d let _any_ ghoul get torn apart by a mob.”  
  
“I know. But…” he grimaced, “better them than you.”  
  
She opened her mouth, forehead furrowing, but he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet.  
  
“Better them than you,” he said again. “I don’t want you trying to save someone if it will get you killed. I don’t want you protecting me if it means they will turn on you. Please understand. It is hard to fight a mob, mistress. I’ve done it before.”  
  
She sniffled, and wound her arms around his neck.  
  
“You’re not a monster,” she said, her voice hushed.  
  
“Of _course_ I —” He broke off, and huffed a sigh. “I know you don’t think of ghouls that way, but you are _unusual_ and you must understand that. The fact that you _don’t care_ does you credit, mistress, but it won’t stop a mob who wants my head. And it will not make me human again.”  
  
“I don’t want to make you human again. I like you the way you are.”  
  
His jaw clenched.  
  
“If Hancock gets his way and turns you ghoul, you will understand,” he said. “I do not want that for you. I don’t want your skin to rot off, I don’t want you to ever feel this sort of horror about yourself.” He swallowed, and lowered his head to press his forehead against her hair. “But I am selfish, mistress. I would help you do it, if it meant that I could keep you for a little longer.”

 

 

 


	52. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This whole "love" thing is going to take some getting used to.

She loved him, and the world had become a place of emotional extremes.  
  
It was pure, aching pleasure to be on the road with her alone again. He had her all to himself. During the day they wandered through the wasteland, checking in with settlements and clearing out ancient bunkers. After the sun went down they talked over their evening meal, sitting close, and Charon made no attempt to restrain himself from touching her, casually or otherwise. There was a solitude out here, and a freedom, that he cherished. There was no one to interrupt them, no one to disapprove. Each night they explored the boundaries of their new understanding, until she curled up in her sleeping bag, and Charon took up his watch.  
  
And then he was alone with himself, the stars, and a lot to sort through in his head.  
  
He had, truly, no idea what he was doing. He had been running on instinct up until now, and it was exhilarating and terrifying by turns. Sloan acted like she had it all laid out in her head, like it was natural for her to — well, to love. It was not natural for Charon. It was strange, and difficult, and confusing. What was he doing here? What if he _ruined_ it somehow, and didn’t realise until it was too late?  
  
 And then there was Hancock. Fucking Hancock, to whom this sort of thing seemed to come so fucking easily. Charon still didn’t know how he felt about his arrangement with Sloan. It seemed to work for them; they both were happy, comfortable, free. It would have been easier if he still disliked Hancock, if he could have summoned up some jealousy about the whole situation, but he couldn’t. After that night in the cave, after she’d said she loved him… He trusted her. Being in a relationship at all was new enough to him, let alone an arrangement like this, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about it. What would it be like, the next time they passed Goodneighbor, to have to let her go?  
  
But that was foolish. She wasn’t going anywhere. She belonged to him.  
  
Regardless, it wouldn’t be right, even if he could have, to take her away from Hancock. No. Perhaps there would have been a moment, an hour, even a night when he felt some kind of greedy satisfaction at having stolen her away, just for himself, but then there would be _guilt._ They clearly fucking loved one another, and he wasn’t monster enough to meddle with that, no matter how strange the situation felt to him. He loved her and he had come to respect Hancock, to a point. He would get used to it.  
  
Occasionally, in the quiet of the early hours while she slept, he would listen to her breathe and realise what he’d managed to get himself into. There would be a moment of clarity: he, Charon, ghoul and slave-in-all-but-name, was _in love_ with his fucking _employer_. The reality of this would grow until it became overwhelming, and then he would panic, curling his hands into fists and biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. This was a _terrible_ idea, he was out of his _mind,_ nothing nothing _nothing_ would come of this but pain. Ancient wordless condemnations twisted in his head, and there were memories, times his gaze had lingered in the wrong place for too long and an employer had noticed and he had been reminded of who and what he was. Reminded of his place.  
  
_How dare you? What gives you the right?_  
  
These moments would linger, sour and nauseating, until she shifted in her sleep or made some soft sound, and they would melt away, replaced by a warmth in his chest that hurt almost as much as the fear.  
  
And then, underneath it all, there was the inevitability of her death. He had dreaded her death for a long time, and it was a hell of a lot worse now he loved her. He had told Valentine, that night on the balcony, that he didn’t care about the grief, but he was lying to himself if he thought it wasn’t going to rip him apart to lose her. The unpleasantness of a new employer, the crushing darkness of having to build his walls back up… he feared it, but he had done it before, or at least some pale facsimile. He had never _lost_ someone before, though. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head. He was glad he rarely slept; the nightmare he’d had in Goodneighbor still haunted him. Some nights he thought back, wondering when he could have done something differently, changed things, to make it so he had never become this attached to her. Other nights he stared at the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, consumed with the fear that it might cease, that she might die in her sleep and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.  
  
_And yet_. And yet she would wake in the morning all soft and beautiful and she would smile at him and then he would kiss her — because he could do that, that was _allowed_ , it was _welcomed_ even — and they would eat together as the sun came up and all the fears of the night fled back into the shadows. Everything seemed clearer. He would get the hang of things, and he would get used to Sloan and Hancock’s weird arrangement, and there was no punishment for this, and she would outlive him, and he could just be _happy_ for once in his goddamn miserable fucking life.  
  
And he _was_ happy. He was _happy._ There was a fullness to things now, a sense of completion, a _belonging_. She had become a part of him.  
  
Their day had been a long one. She had been particularly quiet, and it had taken him until mid-afternoon to realise her menses was troubling her. Nowhere seemed safe to stop, and so they trudged on until after sunset before they found a rocky overhang in a clearing. There was a small stream nearby, trees enough for cover on three sides and the hill on the fourth. A pleasant spot. It would be beautiful in the daylight. He might suggest they stay here for part of the morning, at least. Sloan looked as though she was on the verge of collapse.  
  
He eased her down beneath the overhang, and waited until she seemed to be at least a little comfortable before he went in search of firewood. The stars were out by the time he got back, and as he built their fire Dogmeat trotted out of the darkness with a radstag fawn in his mouth.  
  
Sloan was usually the one to cook, but tonight she just slumped miserably against a stone, and Charon watched her across the fire as he turned the meat.  
  
“Why does this happen?” he asked her at last, cutting some meat from the fawn’s haunches. “It is not a problem for other women.”  
  
“I’m _sure_ that a statistically significant sample size of women share the details of their monthly cycle with you, Charon,” she said.  
  
He opened his mouth, and closed it again. She didn’t snap at him often.  
  
“I spoke out of turn,” he said at last.  
  
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, and sighed, closing her eyes. “I hurt, and I’m tired. That’s all.”  
  
“You should eat,” he prompted her.  
  
“I’m not hungry.”  
  
“Still —”  
  
“I’m nauseous, Charon, okay? Just — I’m tired, and I’m in pain, and you can’t fix it, so just…” She made a dismissive gesture, and bent forward, her hair trailing in the dirt. “I don’t want to talk about it any more. I just want to sit here and suffer.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, and swallowed.  
  
She sighed again, but said nothing, just sat with her head bent and one hand clenching against the ground.  
  
He watched her for a moment, twisted up with concern for her. He had never seen her in this much pain, and it was hell to feel so goddamn useless. At last he pushed himself to his feet, dusting the dirt off his trousers and moving around the fire to sit beside her under the overhang of rock.  
  
“Smoothskin. Tell me what to do.”  
  
He saw her face contort from behind her veil of hair.  
  
“I can’t talk to you right now,” she said.  
  
He hesitated, then reached out to rest his hand on her back.  
  
“You can always talk to me, smoothskin.”  
  
She was still for a moment, but then she straightened, looking up to give him a tired smile.  
  
“Aren’t you sweet?” she said in a hushed voice. “I know I can. It’s just…” she grimaced, “…hard to talk to you, when I’m in pain.”  
  
“Did I do something wrong?”  
  
She shook her head. “Everything I want to say is an order. It’s easier just to keep my mouth shut than to keep undoing things.”  
  
“Orders like what?”  
  
“Like _make it stop_.”  
  
He winced, and rubbed his hand across the small of her back.  
  
“I would if I could, smoothskin.”  
  
“I know that. I know.” She grimaced. “I always want to be… you know. Melodramatic and hyperbolic. It’s hard to avoid telling you to do things you wouldn’t want to do.”  
  
“I will do anything, mistress, if —”  
  
“No, Charon, like… like I’d tell Nate to cut me open and pull my insides out, or I’d ask Hancock to shoot me. I can’t do that with you.”  
  
Charon suppressed the urge to shiver.  
  
“No. I would rather you did not.”  
  
She huffed a bitter little laugh.  
  
“I don’t know if you’d actually _do_ it, but even if you wouldn’t, it’d mess up things in your head.” She closed her eyes and a wave of pain passed over her face. “ _Fuck_.”  
  
He pulled her pack over to hunt through it for a med-X, and reached for her arm.  
  
“Come on,” he said. “A little more won’t kill you.”  
  
She nodded numbly, and he pushed up the sleeve of her jacket, brushing his thumb against the cool skin at the crook of her elbow as he slid the needle into her vein. He watched her as the drug took effect, and saw some of the tension leave her muscles.  
  
“Better?”  
  
She nodded wearily.  
  
“Thanks,” she croaked. “I know you don’t like me taking ‘em more than once a day.”  
  
“The one you had this afternoon should have worn off by now. I do not want you in pain.”  
  
She nodded again, and slumped against his side, her head on his shoulder.  
  
“I love you,” she murmured, and closed her eyes.  
  
“That is the med-X talking,” he said, and she chuckled. He slid an arm around her waist, brushing his thumb against the line of her rib. “I love you too, smoothskin.”  
  
“I know.” She stiffened, turning her head to press her face against his arm. “God damnit. This was easier to deal with before the world ended.”  
  
“How did you manage in the army?”  
  
“I didn’t have it then. I was only diagnosed a couple of years ago. Well, I mean… you know what I mean.”  
  
“What _is_ it? Why are you different?”  
  
“You know the — the lining of the uterus, the part that bleeds every month? Sometimes it can… it went out the wrong way and attached itself to my other organs. It is not a fun time.” She caught the look on his face and attempted a smile. “Oh, no, it’s not… I mean it’s not going to kill me, or anything. It just hurts every so often. Some months I’m fine. Some months I am less fine.”  
  
“It is _growing_ on your _organs?_ ”  
  
“Well, hopefully it’s not _growing_.” She shifted, breath hissing through her teeth. “I’m honestly pretty lucky. Lot of girls have it worse than me. Most months I’m nowhere near this bad.”  
  
“Still. I wish you did not have to suffer like this.”  
  
“Gotta suffer somehow, I guess,” she said, and smiled.  
  
Later, when she should have been sleeping, she dragged herself out of her sleeping bag and staggered in exhausted circles around the fire. Charon always tried to limit any med-X she took, but tonight her distress wore on him until he relented, digging another med-X out of her pack and intercepting her mid-circuit to lead her back over to her sleeping bag.  
  
It might have been a little much, but at least now she could sleep. It bothered him deeply to see her in pain, exhausted, and know he could do nothing to help her.  
  
When her alarm went off the next morning she let out a groan and smacked the top of her pip-boy.  
  
Charon smiled. “We can stay here a while,” he said to her. “There is no hurry. You can go back to sleep.”  
  
“Mmph. Thank you.”  
  
“There is a stream nearby,” he said, unbuckling the straps of his armour and dropping the pieces, one at a time, down next to the fire. “I am going to fill a canteen, and wash my shirt. I will not be long. Please _stay awake,_ mistress, until I get back.”  
  
She made a non-committal sound that suggested she was already halfway back to sleep. He had hoped she would at least be alert enough to protect herself if something happened, but it appeared not.  
  
Charon huffed a sigh, and shot a look at the dog.  
  
“Watch the mistress,” he said, and Dogmeat wagged his tail.  
  
The stream lay down a shallow hill, and Charon paused as he approached to watch the birds catching bugs on the water’s surface. Why birds did not seem affected by the radiation of the post-apocalyptic world was something he had never been able to work out, nor why some insects were huge, and others as small as they had always been. It was a pleasant thing to watch, as if part of the world was somehow untouched.  
  
He set his shotgun down, dropping the chestpiece of his armour next to it and then peeling off his shirt. He crouched to dip it into the stream. It was cold, and the low levels of radiation barely tingled. Low enough, perhaps, that Sloan might like a bath. It might help her feel a little better, to be clean. And — Charon smiled to himself — she would be beautiful in the early morning light, naked, the sun shining off the water on her skin…  
  
He shook his head at himself, rubbing his shirt against the stones at the bottom of the stream bed. The hem was caked in blood, and while ghouls didn’t sweat much it was still covered in dirt. He pulled it out of the water, squeezing it out and holding it up in the morning light to check the stains.  
  
Then a hand clamped a cloth across his mouth.  
  
He took a breath instinctively, inhaling something that made his chest seize and his eyes water. He dropped his shirt, reaching up to pull the hand away, but his arms wouldn’t move properly, wouldn’t do what he wanted them to. He managed to push against whoever was behind him, and as they let him go the world careened sideways.  
  
Hands caught him as he fell, pushing him onto his front on the dirt and tying his wrists behind his back. Charon struggled, but he was weak; whatever they had drugged him with had sapped his strength and fogged his vision. It was hard to move, hard to think. He should be calling for help. He tried, but he couldn’t find his tongue, couldn’t make his voice work. And would she even hear him, if he cried out?  
  
The mistress. No. No no no no — he couldn’t leave her alone — he had to go back. He struggled again, desperately trying to find the connection between his brain and his mouth.  
  
“Mm-mmm…”  
  
“Don’t bother,” a voice behind him said. “Ain’t nothing you have to say that we wanna hear. Just relax. We’ll be there soon.”  
  
“He’s a big fucker,” another voice grunted. “Good thing we brought the cart.”  
  
They dragged him to their campsite, far enough away that Charon had regained the control of his tongue by the time they arrived. He still felt weak, and the men on either side of him had an iron grip on his arms. They looked like raiders, but no raiders dressed like this. Raiders wore leather, spikes… these men wore cloth. Shoes, not boots. More like the triggermen than raiders.  
  
Five had come to drag him from the stream, including one that might have been their leader: a well-dressed man with black hair and long, straight teeth. Three more men were waiting here at the campsite, one sharpening a knife, another on top of a wagon, holding open the door of a cage.  
  
A _cage_. Charon growled, and was rewarded with a smack on the back of the head.  
  
“Shut your ugly face,” one of the men spat.  
  
“I’m afraid we’re a day’s travel from home,” the man with the black hair told him. “Brahmin-drawn cart is the best we can do for getting you home. Not as stealthy as we’d like, but we can’t haul you all the way there on foot. That bitch is fucking crafty. We need to get as much distance from her as we can before she follows us.” He grinned. “You can’t imagine how long we’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this. I’ve had boys following you for over a week. Poor Ralph saw more than he wanted to. Scarred him for life.”  
  
“Bitch has a strong stomach,” another man chimed in.  
  
“Fuck you,” Charon snarled, and another blow over the back of the head had him seeing stars.  
  
“That ain’t polite,” said the man beside him, tightening his grip on his arm. “You really oughtta be polite.”  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New story arc! Huzzah~!


	53. Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon's not a big fan of what's happening right now. He would like to go home now, please.

  
The cart stopped.  
  
Charon opened his eyes. He was tired, stiff, and sore after two days of ceaseless travel. He wasn’t sure if his captors had drugged themselves to stay awake for the journey or if they had simply changed shifts at some point; he was only familiar with one of them by sight, the man with the black hair and the long straight teeth. The others all seemed to blend together. Whatever they had drugged him with had messed with his head, left him confused; it was only just beginning to wear off, and he had been dreading another dose of the stuff.  
  
They hadn’t removed the bindings on his wrists, and his shoulders ached. Once they had him in the cage they’d bound his legs with ropes, and gagged him with a strip of dirty cloth. He was given water, twice a day, and a chance to relieve himself. No food.   
  
The worst part was they all seemed so fucking _jovial_. Like soldiers at the end of a mission. It was easy to hate them, and Charon had indulged in it over the two days it had taken to get here. It was better than thinking of Sloan, who might be anywhere, who might be hurt, whom he had _left alone,_ sick and drugged in the middle of the wasteland with only a fucking dog to protect her. It was hate them or hate himself, and he picked them.  
  
The men were pleased to be home, greeting their comrades who had stayed behind, at whatever place this was. It seemed just a rocky outcrop on the side of a barren hill, until Charon noticed a door in a recess of the rock. A bunker.  
  
One of the new men was peering at him. A tall and slender figure with hair almost to his waist, he had an intelligence and an _eagerness_ in his eyes that made Charon’s nerves prickle. The black-haired man materialised at his side, and the tall man glanced at him with a smile.  
  
“Ah. Good. You managed to get him, then.” He peered at Charon again. “Big one, isn’t he? Did he give you much trouble?”  
  
“Less than you’d think. Caught him washing some blood of his shirt,” Black-hair said. “What do you think, boss?”   
  
“Does he bite?” The man looked amused, almost excited.   
  
Black-hair’s lips parted in a grin. “He tried. You want him talking?”  
  
The man nodded. “Trade those ropes for some chains, and — no… no. Actually, why don’t you stick him in the cage? Just until we get to know each other.” He leant a little closer, and smiled at Charon. “Won’t that be nice?”  
  
Someone behind him clamped a damp cloth across his face, and Charon’s vision blurred. He hadn’t even heard the cage door open…  
  
He came to in what must have been the gang’s common room, and he groaned as he lifted his head off the floor.   
  
He was in another cage. This one was more like a cell, set into the rock wall with thick steel bars. It was out of place here; the room was more well-appointed than anything a raider could have scraped together, and that gave him chills, because these people must be _organised._ No windows, which meant well-defensible. The table in the middle of the room was long, made of polished wood, and there was a bowl in the centre filled with fucking _fruit,_ although there seemed to be a grenade or two in there was well. There was a chair at the head of the table with a high back, almost like a throne. Bookshelves, rugs, easy-chairs… these people were wealthy. Very, very wealthy.   
  
Charon slumped against the back of the cage, and closed his eyes. This had been planned, and planned very well. These were no opportunists. They had come for him specifically. Did they want his contract? What had they done with Sloan when they realised she hadn’t had it on her?  
  
His gut churned at the thought. His only solace was that he knew she was not dead. If she had been, he would have felt the contract’s lash of punishment, and the subsequent tug that meant it was time to retrieve it, and to find it a new owner. She was not dead… but she might be hurt, unconscious, or in a cell down the hall, for all he knew. It gnawed at him. Fucking Christ, _why_ had he left her alone? She’d been half-asleep and still dopey from the fucking med-X, what was he _thinking_ leaving her alone? He could have gotten her killed. _Useless._  
  
He’d been in a dream world. All caught up by the fact that he _loved_ her and he was _happy,_ he hadn’t even noticed they were being tailed. A _week_ those men had been tailing them. And then to let them sneak up on him by the stream… He deserved this. He was lucky they hadn’t just put a bullet in his head.   
  
Or hers.  
  
“Ah, you’re awake!”   
  
He heard the clack of shoes across the floor, and looked up to see the long-haired man smiling down at him.   
  
“How did you enjoy your journey? I trust my men treated you well?”  
  
Charon stared at him.   
  
“The woman,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “The woman I was with. What did you do with her?”  
  
“You’re worried about _her?_ ” The man snorted. “Don’t be. It’s not her we want. It’s her money.” He grinned. “If she pays up, she gets you back alive. We don’t hear from her in a month, we start cutting bits off and sending them back.” He leant closer to the bars. “We’ll start with your cock. I’m sure that’s the part she likes best.”  
  
Charon snarled and grabbed at him through the bars, but he slipped away from him, laughing.   
  
The man toyed with him for a while, asking him questions — as smoothskins sometimes did — about a distant past Charon did not remember. Charon held his tongue, and gave him a long, impassive stare. He thought it would make him angry, but instead the man just smiled. Eventually he pulled a book from the shelf, and leafed through it as he walked out the door.  
  
He was back in an hour or so, all his men with him, gathering around the table in high spirits. And they were nearly exclusively men. If there were more women here than the one sitting at the high table, they did not use this room. They poured bottles of wine, tapping their glasses against one another and drinking each other’s health. The man sat at the head of the table, smiling over at Charon from time to time in an amiable way, and drinking from something that might almost be called a goblet. He’d made himself a king, and he was holding court.   
  
Charon watched them, and they watched him. Their eyes shone with something like greed. He knew that look, knew it well. He was _meat_ to them. They saw someone they could hurt, something big they could subdue. No doubt they relished the fact they would be allowed, in a month’s time, to cut parts off his body.  
  
Eventually, the king filled a wooden cup with some water — not a glass, he would not be so foolish as to hand him a weapon — and set it on the ground just outside the bars. He stepped back, and with a small bow, he left, his men filing out behind him.   
  
Charon looked at the cup for a long while. He did not want to drink anything these people gave him, but his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton wool. He bit the inside of his cheek, and leant through the bars to take the cup.   
  
The water was purified, sweet, but not drugged. They wasted purified water on a _ghoul._ Charon grimaced, and tossed the empty cup across the room. The benefits of the radiation in ordinary dirty water were slim, but these men would deny him even that.   
  
The king came into the room several times a day, to read or lounge in one of the chairs. Occasionally he would read aloud, and ask Charon what he thought. Charon stared at him, and ground his teeth, and said nothing. The king found this amusing, for reasons Charon could not ascertain. Perhaps he thought him stupid. Too ignorant or dull-witted to have an opinion on fucking Proust.  
  
Sometimes others would come in, seeking amusement. They were vicious bastards, these men. Some of them would taunt him, whispering about the pieces of him they were going to cut off. One of them enjoyed poking at him with a sharpened stick while his companion giggled, until he failed to pull it back fast enough and Charon grabbed the end, and yanked the fucker’s forehead into the bars. This only made the other man laugh harder. The woman he’d seen came once. She’d watched the others taunting him and touched herself, and blown him a kiss as she left.  
  
The black-haired man came only when they gathered in the evening to eat and drink, when he would grin at Charon from the far side of the table and raise a glass in salute.   
  
It was after the seventh meal that things changed. While the others filed out, the king stayed, swirling Charon’s daily cup of water and looking down contemplatively into the cage.  
  
“I was disappointed that you decided against getting to know us better, ghoul,” he said. “It’s always nice to get to know one’s guests, don’t you think?”  
  
Charon narrowed his eyes. He wanted desperately to hear some news of Sloan, but he didn’t want to ask and give this man the satisfaction. Presumably they had left her alone, if what they wanted was her money, but they were cruel. The idea that she had been tortured or raped was something that haunted him. The king could make his promises, but Charon doubted his people followed all his rules when he wasn’t around to watch them.   
  
“Hopefully our mutual friend the vault-dweller will soon be dropping a nice big bag of caps off for some of my boys,” the king said. “Then she can have you back. Won’t that be nice?” When Charon said nothing, he sighed. “You know, I think the boys have had their fun. I am bored with looking at you. Besides, you’re putting some of the fellows off their dinner. They don’t all have the strongest stomachs, you know. Some of them find it most difficult to choke down a meal with a corpse in the room.”  
  
Charon managed not to flinch. How had he grown so unused to these kinds of insults? Six fucking months of Sloan and Goodneighbor was all it took to turn him soft?  
  
He wanted, very much, to tell the king that Sloan had never had a problem with eating in front of him. Never. Not since the first day. Instead he held his tongue, and stared at him, until at last the king set the cup of water down in front of him, and walked out of the room without another glance.  
  
The water tasted a little bitter this time, and when Charon’s vision started to swim, he wasn’t at all surprised.  
  


 

 


	54. Pit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon would really, REALLY like to go home now, please.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters a little more frequent because I realised the other day that from my perspective it feels like it's over pretty quick, but you guys would be dealing with Charon having a bad time for, like, a month.

It was dark.  
  
There were no windows in this cell. From his fleeting glimpses of the place, Charon guessed they were in some kind of bunker. No one had come through the door since he’d dragged himself back to consciousness hours earlier, and he was trying with a stony determination to keep track of time.  
  
Underneath everything else — the concern for Sloan, the anger at his captors — there was a cold dread that he would be left here for months. This was colder still than his other fear, that the men would come back and amuse themselves with tormenting him. They had no contract to forbid them from harming him, and there had been a lust in their eyes Charon recognised too well. These were men that took pleasure in killing, in causing pain. The man on his high chair was the only thing holding them back.  
  
As far as he could tell the cell was sparse. There was an old soiled mattress, and something soft on the other side of the room that smelt like death. He couldn’t see the door in the darkness, and nor could he reach it. There were chains on his wrists and ankles, a thick steel collar around his neck, and a voice in his head.   
  
The voice was new. During his last long imprisonment he had lost all sense of time and self, he had gone mad, but the sounds that had created themselves in the dreaded silence had no coherence to them. Songs and laughter, shouts, screams, words that made no sense to him. This voice was different, and he didn’t feel mad yet, just afraid.  
  
The voice was taunting him, and he thought perhaps he preferred the screams.   
  
_You are going to die here,_ the voice hissed. _You will die alone and you will never see her again._   
  
_The mistress will come for me,_ he said in his mind.   
  
_The mistress won’t come for you. When has any employer come for you? For a piece of property? You are not worth it._  
  
 _She loves me,_ he thought stubbornly.  
  
 _Does she? Or is that just something you tell yourself? It’s pathetic, the way you worship her._   
  
_I don’t worship her._   
  
_No? You obey her **willingly**. Admit it, you crave her orders right now, just so you could hear her voice. You’d kiss the ground she walked on. You’re pathetic._  
  
 _She loves me._  
  
 _She loves Hancock. She loves her husband, the one you put in the ground. She doesn’t love you. How can you compare yourself to them? Nate was handsome, brave. Hancock has the world to give to her, a world he built himself. What do you have? What have you done, that wasn’t an order made by someone else? You’re a slave. A pest she can’t rid herself of. Now she has a chance to be free of you. You think she won’t take it? You want her to risk her life for you? Pathetic._  
  
Charon hung his head between his knees, hands in his hair. It was hard to tell himself the voice was a liar when it said things that were true. He had nothing, _was_ nothing. How could he expect her to come for him? How could he _want_ her to, knowing it would put her in harm’s way?  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
He was not left in the dark for long. He counted the time by the meals they left him: old fruit, wizened or rotting; half-eaten meat scraps from someone else’s dinner. Four meals had been tossed on his cell floor, though how many days it had actually been, he had no way of knowing.  
  
They came for him in what must have been the evening. They stank of booze, and hope flared; even with his hands and feet chained he could beat a bunch of drunkards. But they were armed, and he would have to be quick as well as careful. He watched them, looking for weaknesses. Not here; he did not know the layout of the place, or how many others there would be between him and freedom. He’d have to wait it out. Pick his moment.   
  
They unlocked the shackles around his feet, and replaced the manacles with an old pair of handcuffs. Charon had to keep himself from grinning. Pathetic. He might even be able to break these, or use them to choke one of the fuckers to death.   
  
Then they clipped a chain to his collar, a second, a third, and the flare of joy died to be replaced by a dark, bitter hatred. He hated being chained, but more, he hated being treated like a dog. A vicious animal that must be kept on a leash. A beast that could not be trusted. He knew this hatred came from somewhere, knew it as he knew he must once have had a family, but whatever had happened to instill this bitterness, it was lost to him now.   
  
Three of them held the chains, pulling him forward, tugging him left and right and laughing as he tried to keep from stumbling.   
  
“Boss says he never promised the vault-dweller we’d give you back in one piece,” said the man with the black hair. His hair was pushed back from his face, and he bared his long teeth in a smile. As he stared down at the man, Charon realised with a sinking heart that this one was a lot less drunk than he thought. The man’s grin widened, his eyes shining with the promise of violence. “You’re going to be our entertainment tonight.”  
  
The hallway was long, and sloped up, and eventually it opened up into a walled fort, open to the sky. Fires burnt in barrels, and there were dogs baying in cages. They snarled when they caught his scent, and Charon grimaced.  
  
“You’re going to set your dogs on me?”  
  
The black-haired man laughed. “We thought about it,” he said cheerfully, and reached around to unlock his handcuffs. “Then we remembered we had something put aside for an extra special night.”  
  
The men with the leashes tugged at him, pulled him forward until he saw the pit dug into the ground. It was wide, and it was deep. And there was a yao-guai at the bottom.  
  
The men with the leashes circled to the far side of the pit, the fire-light glinting off their teeth. They pulled, just a little, just enough that he was teetering on the edge, and the black-haired man put a companionable hand on his back.  
  
“Have fun,” he said, and pushed.  
  
He tried to roll as he landed, but the leashes had him off-balance, and instead he had to fight to keep the chains from tangling around his neck. They were laughing, these people, making bets, throwing down insults and empty beer bottles. Those with the leashes held them loosely enough that he had room to manoeuvre, but not so loose that he had any chance of escaping.   
  
The yao-guai was big. Bigger than most. That they’d captured it at all was testament to the fact that these men knew what they were doing. It reared up, taller than Charon, almost as tall as the walls of the pit, and swiped at him with one massive paw.  
  
He darted to one side, but one of the chains pulled tight and stopped him short. The creature’s claws caught him across the left side of his chest, and he tried to smother the automatic cry of pain. He had no time to think about it, no time to worry how bad the injury might be. It came for him again, slashing at his neck, and he ducked the blow and jumped back as it fell to all fours.   
  
The pit was too small. The men holding the leashes restricted him too much, the pit was too small, and already he felt the wall at his back. The men were moving, though, moving to one side so he could circle around the yao-guai, and he darted past it to gain some space.   
  
“Don’t worry, ghoul,” Black-hair told him cheerfully. “We’ve done this sort of thing before. We won’t let it kill you. You might _wish_ you were dead, though.”  
  
With a growl, Charon took a run at the side of the pit, kicking off to jump up and grab at the lip of the wall, but the leash-men were quick and they circled behind to yank at his collar and throw him back onto the ground.  
  
The yao-guai was on him in seconds, its teeth tearing into his shoulder, and this time he couldn’t suppress the shout of pain and shock. He kicked at it, trying to push it off. It went for him again, for his neck, but before its jaw could close a laser round clipped its hide and it turned, snarling at the men on the ground above.   
  
Charon pulled himself to his feet. Blood was pouring from both wounds, and he had landed badly on one arm. The yao-guai rounded on him again, charging, and he darted for the other side of the pit. Too slow. It grabbed for him, claws sinking into his calf, and pulled him back towards it to bury its teeth in his wounded arm. It pulled off a chunk of flesh. Charon stared at it, at the skin, _his_ skin, between the animal’s teeth. With a shiver of horror he pulled away, jumping to his feet, but he made it only two steps before his calf gave out and he was on the dirt again.   
  
The men distracted the beast, drawing it away long enough for him to find his feet.   
  
“It’s no fun if you don’t work for it!” the black-haired man yelled down at him. “Fight harder, ghoul. You’re big enough. Almost as big as the yao-guai! Put some fucking effort in! Some of us have bets riding.”  
  
The leash-men were on three sides now, one each to his left and right, and one behind him. He gave them fleeting glances, his eyes still mostly on the beast in front of him, circling side to side. One of the men, the one to his right, was paying less attention to him than the others. He had his chain wrapped around his arm, but his eyes were on the man next to him.   
  
Charon grabbed the chain in one hand, and pulled.  
  
The man screamed as he fell into the pit. He was on his feet in an instant, scrabbling at the walls, but Charon pulled him back with a snarl and wrapped an arm around his throat.   
  
He held him in front of him as the Yao-guai closed in.   
  
“I won’t die today,” he hissed into his ear. “There’s no ransom for dead men. But _you_ might.”  
  
“Shoot it!” the man screamed. “Shoot it, shoot it!”   
  
The yao-guai slashed at his torso and Charon didn’t bother to pull him away.  His guts tumbled out onto the dirt, and the yao-guai closed in. Charon watched it eating them, chewing on the man’s organs. The man screamed and screamed until his voice died away, and Charon grinned.  
  


 

 


	55. Suffering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghouls are tough. Thank goodness.

The man in the bear-pit hadn’t survived, and nor had the yao-guai. Charon had paid for both lives with a beating more thorough than any he had suffered in a long, long time.  
  
They’d left his head alone, for the most part. They needed him alive and couldn’t risk a brain injury, not with the rage in them. They loved violence, these men, and they craved revenge, but they knew their own limits and they didn’t touch his head after the first man had swung a swatter at his teeth and nearly cracked his jaw. They broke his bones with pipes and hammers, they carved their names into his skin, and when they finally left him in a groaning, broken heap, Charon raised his head, grinned at them with blood in his teeth, and hissed that it was worth it.  
  
They left him to suffer, with only some dirty water to help his wounds.  
  
As soon as they were gone and he was alone in the cell, he let himself sink back onto the concrete floor, and whimpered to himself. Two of his back teeth were gone and he had swallowed some blood. He wanted to vomit, but retching was agony. He needed rest and stimpaks and radiation.   
  
He crawled his way over to the carton of dirty water, and managed to push himself up onto his unbroken forearm. He wouldn’t be able to lift the carton, he knew that without trying, he needed fluid, so he reached for it, grunting in pain. He could barely lift his arm, let alone close his hand around it. He grit his teeth in frustration, and nudged the carton towards him, spilling a little water over his face. He swirled some of it around in his mouth, and his gums started bleeding again. Not enough radiation in the water to grow the teeth back. Not even enough to help the gums heal. He tried to tip some more water into his mouth but he nudged the carton too far, and it fell, spilling out over the floor.  
  
He let out a sob, and rested his forehead on the ground. If he lay in the water, let himself soak, it might do something, anything to help heal his wounds a little. More likely, he might catch an infection from the cell floor, something the meagre radiation couldn’t kill. He couldn’t afford that. It was bad enough he was lying on this filthy floor with open wounds. Instead he pressed his mouth against the concrete, and tried to sip up some of the water.  
  
They wouldn’t let him die down here. He was worth too much to them alive, at least for now. If the mistress never paid his ransom, they might kill him eventually. Whenever the cost of keeping him alive on scraps and stims outweighed whatever amusement he provided them.   
  
He would not let himself become like the soft thing by the wall. He survived. That’s what Sloan had said. He was a survivor. Like her.  
  
At least they had left the light on this time. He wasn’t sure he could deal with the darkness right now, with its taunting voice. With the light, he couldn’t forget where he was. He could see the cell, and what he could see, he could analyse. He could store this knowledge away, maybe use it another day, when he had healed — if they ever let him heal. If nothing else, it was a distraction. The pain brought clarity, now, when there was adrenaline still in his veins. Later, it would exhaust him.  
  
He had lost a great deal in the dark place, where he had been kept so long ago by an employer he would not let himself remember. His sanity, his sense of self. Memories, maybe — he didn’t even know what he might have lost then, and what might have been lost years earlier. Without food, without water, without light, he had dissociated from his body. For a while he had tried to hurt himself just to remind himself he _had_ a body, that he had a physical self. That he was still alive. There were limits to it — he could not kill himself, could not cause significant injury. But he could bleed. Once he even dug his own teeth into his flesh, and felt his skin in his mouth, the first meat he had tasted in weeks or months. He had swallowed it, only to retch it up moments later, shaking with horror.   
  
If there were scars from that time they had long since faded into the rest of the ruin that was his skin. These names, though, the things they’d cut into him… If the men didn’t return with a stimpak within the next day or so they would scar, some of them badly. Charon let his eyes wander down over one arm, trying to examine the cuts without reading the words. Deep, some of them. Bleeding. He realised with a queasy feeling that some of them _weren’t_ names. They were insults, words humans threw at ghouls. Would they even let him back into Goodneighbor, with words like that carved into him?   
  
He almost laughed at himself. Was a part of him really that certain he would get out of here? He was more likely to end up like the soft thing on the other side of his cell, the thing he was trying to avoid looking at. Anyway, everyone was allowed in Goodneighbor. He had trouble imagining Hancock kicking him out over something like that. A refuge for the lost, they called it. And he was lost.   
  
Goodneighbor, with its shameless ghouls and its humans that looked you in the face. He wondered if Sloan was back there now. He hoped she was. Someplace safe, somewhere with people who cared about her. People who would look after her, now that he couldn’t.  
  
A wave of unexpected grief passed over him, and he closed his eyes. God, he missed her. He missed the sound of her voice, and her smile, and the way she smelled. The way she moved. The feel of her skin under his hands. The way she would sit with him and talk about nothing, and it was somehow the most comfortable thing in the world.  
  
He was going to die alone here, and he’d never see her again.   
  
He hadn’t thought too much about his own death. It had always been a distant thing to him, except in moments when it had seemed suddenly all too imminent. In that raiders’ nest, bleeding out onto the ground… It hadn’t seemed wrong to him, then, to be dying. Probably the blood loss talking, or the pain, but somehow it had seemed right. Peaceful. Even with the bullets flying.  
  
This place… this was nothing like that. He would fight death until his last moment.   
  
She had been with him, at the raiders’ nest. Perhaps that was it. Knowing she was there, knowing she would… would hold his hand, maybe. That he could see her, that even if he couldn’t, at least she was close by. Maybe it was the contract in his head, guiding his thoughts, but it was supremely important that he see her again. Even if he died the moment he did… at least he would have returned to her.   
  
So he had to survive. He had to survive, and find a way out of here.  
  
There was the mattress, up against the wall. It would be good to lie on something soft. The concrete was hell on his cracked ribs, and the cold was starting to seep into him. Getting there, though… that would be hard. He was pretty sure his knee was broken, and now the adrenaline was beginning to fade the torn muscle in his calf would not want to cooperate. With one shattered hand, a torn and broken forearm, and what might be a fractured humerus, dragging himself all the way across the floor would not be easy.  
  
He tried to push himself up with one elbow. The knee would not behave; there was no putting weight on that leg. The other, though… Once he was sitting upright, panting a little with the effort, he stretched out his left leg and planted his heel. Slowly, he tried to edge himself forward. Bruised and torn, his muscles protested, but he grit his teeth and forced himself on. It would be worth it, to lie on something just a little bit softer than this floor.   
  
He was half a yard from the mattress when he heard a key turn in the door, and he closed his eyes and swallowed a sob of frustration.  
  
“Did you kill one of my men, ghoul?”  
  
Charon suppressed a shudder, and looked over his shoulder at the king. He was smiling faintly, and Charon fought against the instinct to shy away from him.  
  
“We can’t kill you,” he said, “not yet. We need you alive in case we need to send some kind of proof to the vault-dweller. And I’ve always felt death was such a permanent way of resolving a dispute. Don’t you think? Especially when there are…” His eyes roamed over the cuts in Charon’s skin. “…Alternative solutions.”  
  
Charon swallowed. “I won’t make it easy for you.”  
  
The king’s smile was almost affectionate. “Of course not.” He glanced over his shoulder, into the hallway. “Declan, Rob.”  
  
Charon did not recognise these two. They hadn’t been with the others when they’d thrown him to the yao-guai. But there was hatred in their eyes, all the same. He couldn’t stop himself from leaning away from them as they drew close, but they weren’t armed. His eyes flitted over them, searching for a weapon, and found nothing, not even guns in their holsters. Then one of them, circling him carefully, bent to pick up one of the chains attached to the wall.  
  
Charon closed his eyes. He could take another beating, even one with chains. It would be torture, but he would endure it. The man drew close, he could feel him, less than a foot away. Then the manacle closed around his wrist, and his eyes snapped open.  
  
No. No. This was worse, this was worse than a beating. A beating at least had an end to it, but this… The chains would weigh him down, they’d press on his bruises, drag on his broken bones. He wouldn’t be able to move.  
  
“Take the mattress,” The king said when they had finished attaching his chains. “He won’t be needing it.”  
  
Black-hair appeared in the doorway, stepping aside to let the other two pass with the mattress between them. He grinned at the king, and then his eyes slid over to Charon.  
  
“Good news, boss,” he said, though he didn’t take his eyes off Charon. “The scouts say they think the woman’s going to pay.”  
  
“She doesn’t have the caps,” Charon rasped. “You won’t get anything from her.”  
  
“Oh, she’ll pay,” the king murmured, his smile widening, just a little. “One way or another.”  
  
They closed the door behind them, and turned out the light.  
  
  


 

 


	56. Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Took them long enough.

The gunshots sounded so distant that at first he barely paid them any mind. Even when they drew close, to the hall outside his cell, he only wished they were not so loud. His head hurt. _Everything_ hurt. The voice had returned with its hateful whispering, _you left her, you failed her, she could be hurt and it’s because of you,_ and all he wanted was to suffer in peace.  
  
The door jolted, and swung open with a low creak. Someone switched on the light.   
  
Charon couldn’t lift his head. He closed his eyes. Let them come, if they wanted to. Let them carve more slurs into his skin, let them spit and rage.   
  
“Hey, he’s in here!”  
  
The voice was familiar, and it didn’t belong here. He opened his eyes, and saw boots that were five hundred years old.   
  
_Hancock?_  
  
He strained to push himself upright, and fell back against the concrete.   
  
“H-han…”  
  
The figure crouched beside him and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Ferryman. We’re gonna get you outta here, okay?”  
  
There were gunshots in the hallway, and men running past. Charon tried again to pull himself into a sitting position, and Hancock eased him up with a hand at his back. Movement meant pain, and Charon bit back a groan.   
  
“Shh-she came f-for m—”  
  
“Hey, take it easy.” He gave him a thin smile. “’Course she came. She’s putting a bullet in the last few fuckers. I’m gonna go help her, okay?”  
  
There was a yell from the hall, and Hancock squeezed his shoulder.   
  
“We’ll be right back, brother. Sit tight.”  
  
He was out the door in a moment, yelling curses, and one of Charon’s captors let out a scream. Another one darted into the cell, his eyes flashing with a dark, frantic desperation, and he lifted his gun.  
  
“Bitch can’t have you back,” he hissed, and spat blood on the floor.   
  
A shadow lurked in the doorway behind him, slipping forward on silent feet, and the man turned just as the knife flashed upwards and embedded itself between his ribs. The figure held him close as he gasped, struggling against the blade in his chest.   
  
“I _will_ have him back,” snarled the figure. She let him fall.   
  
It was her, it was _her,_ and for a brief moment the world wobbled, as if she _couldn’t_ be here, he couldn’t understand her in this place. She was covered in blood, her shotgun hanging from one hand, a knife in her fist. She bared her teeth and kicked the man at her feet as he gurgled his last.   
  
“ _Mine,_ ” she hissed, and fired her shotgun into his face.  
  
The shots in the hall fell silent. He could hear her breathing, and he reached up for her, the weight of his chains pulling down on his broken arm.   
  
“Charon,” she said, and her eyes were wet. She dropped to the floor beside him and lifted a hand to stroke his face. “Charon, Charon, Charon.”   
  
Hancock slipped back through the doorway, reloading his shotgun.   
  
“Looks like he’s got some broken bones on top of all those fucking cuts,” he said. “Like, a _lot_ of them. Knee’s swollen all to hell. We’ll have to set them all before we give him a stim or we’ll need to re-break a bunch of them later. You know how to do that?” he asked bluntly. “’Cause I don’t.”  
  
She was silent for a moment, one hand still stroking the side of his face. Charon couldn’t take his eyes from her, could barely believe she was here. This could be a dream, an illusion. He might wake and find himself alone in the darkness again.   
  
“There’s that woman,” she said. “The doctor.”  
  
“You ain’t serious.”  
  
“She’s close by. Not too far. We just have to get him there.”  
  
Hancock hesitated, paced the length of the room and back.   
  
“What’s wr-rong?” Charon croaked at him. His tongue was heavy in his mouth.   
  
“The doctor’s place sits on a shitload of radiation,” Hancock told him. “Like _major_ radiation.”  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Sloan said. “It’ll be good for him, all that radiation.”  
  
“Good for him. Bad for you.” He sighed. “But I guess we ain’t got many options.”  
  
“The alternative is re-breaking his bones when we realise we fucked up. It’s been a long time since boot camp and I’ve never had to set a bone in the field.”  
  
Radiation enough to make Hancock unhappy. Not somewhere Charon wanted her to go.  
  
“I choose rre-brreaking boness,” he slurred.  
  
“Too bad.”  
  
He wanted to reach for her, and couldn’t. The chains on his wrists pulled him down, they were too heavy, it was agony. He leant towards her, just a little, and winced as his chest muscles rebelled and spasmed.  
  
“You’ll get s-ssick,” he said.   
  
“Yep. I will.” She slid closer to him, and lifted his arm a little, perhaps to lift it over her shoulder, but instead she froze as he hissed in pain.  
  
“Don’t,” he said, pulling his arm up against his ribs. They were broken too, some of them. He could feel them moving every time he took a breath. A part of him wanted to lie down again, to lie down and die, but he wouldn’t give the ghosts of these men the satisfaction. He wasn’t going to die in this shit-hole. The mistress had come for him. He was going to live.   
  
“How’re we going to move him?” Hancock asked, crouching at his other side. “Can’t lean on us if his arms are broken. If that kneecap is as fucked as it looks, it ain’t like he can walk anyway.” He grimaced. “The other leg looks like a yao-guai’s been at it.”   
  
“It has.” Charon swayed a little, then turned and pressed his face into the mistress’s shoulder. “Dead n-now,” he croaked. “Dead, and the m-man’s dead, they’re both…”  
  
“He’s too big to carry,” Hancock was saying in a tight voice. “Even if he weren’t, we can’t even do _that_ without hurting him. How the hell are we supposed to get him out of here?”  
  
The mistress chewed on the inside of her lip. “We’ll try setting the kneecap. God willing it hasn’t been too long for them to work… if we give him half a stimpak at the point of injury it might make it easier for him to move, and keep the rest of the bones from healing. I’ve done something like it before, and it worked all right. Then we go with Plan B.”  
  
“What’s Plan B?”  
  
“We pump him full of med-X and then I tell him to walk.”  
  
“And how the hell’s that going to help?” Hancock’s dark eyes caught on one of the anti-ghoul slurs carved into Charon’s skin, and he turned and spat.   
  
Charon lifted his head. He was tired, and he _hurt,_ but this was the best option and he knew it.   
  
“The m-mistress comm-mands,” he said. “I obey. No m-matter what.”  
  
Hancock recoiled. “That’s _sick._ ”  
  
“I know,” Sloan said. “It’s fucked up, and it’ll hurt. But he’ll live. This place smells like death and he can’t stay here. He’s been here too long already. Please, John. I can’t leave him here.”  
  
“I _know_ that.” Hancock swore, and paced the length of the cell. “Fine. I got… maybe twelve med-X on me. That’s enough to drop a brahmin.”  
  
“More than enough,” Sloan said. She helped ease Charon down onto his back, and slipped from his side to crouch by his shattered knee. She tore the cloth of his trousers away and chewed on her bottom lip.   
  
“Is it even gonna heal? How long’s he been here?”  
  
“I don’t know. With injuries not exposed to air…” She shook her head. “I mean, there’s a lot more leeway — days, maybe a week — but…”  
  
“Guess it don’t matter. It works or we come up with a new plan.”  
  
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll hold the bone together. You inject the stim.”  
  
“Med-X first,” he said, and slid the needle into Charon’s wrist. He winked at him. “Enjoy the ride, big guy. It’s going to be a hell of a trip.”  
  
He grunted in pain as Sloan pressed at his knee, trying to corral the fragments of bone together. There was a hiss as Hancock administered the stimpak, and Charon held his breath. There was a reasonable chance the bone wouldn’t heal. He’d been lying here… he didn’t know how long. Too long to take on trust that stimpaks would work. There was a moment of suspended tension, of fear, and then he could feel his shattered kneecap starting to knit, and the pain faded. He sighed in relief, only to grimace as the breath made his chest ache.  
  
“Okay. Charon,” she said, “what’s the most med-X you’ve ever had and still been conscious? We need you awake and moving.”  
  
Charon closed his eyes for a moment. “Ff-five. M-maybe more. Lost count.”  
  
“Five it is, then.”  
  
Sloan took one arm and Hancock the other, and they pressed med-X into his veins until the pain had all receded and he was floating in a world of softness and cotton wool.   
  
Charon smiled to himself. He couldn’t move properly, he was broken, but that was okay. Everything was okay because he was warm and everything was soft, and the mistress was here and so was Hancock, and everything would be fine. She was looking down at him with her big hazel eyes. He could lose himself in those eyes.  
  
“You’re s-so pretty,” he murmured, and she smiled.  
  
They talked for a moment, about a key for his chains, but Charon didn’t really listen. He closed his eyes. There were footsteps going out into the hall, and he felt a cool hand against his cheek.  
  
“You in there, Charon?”  
  
“Yes,” he croaked. “Everything is s-soft.”  
  
“That’s good,” the mistress said, and stroked his hair. “As soon as you’re well I’m going to give you the biggest hug. I’ve missed you so much. I am _so_ sorry.”  
  
He opened his eyes and blinked blearily at her.   
  
“What ff-forr?”  
  
Hancock returned, a key in one hand, and he bent to unlock the chains at his feet.   
  
“I didn’t wake up,” she said. “I wasn’t there.”  
  
He shook his head slowly. None of what she was saying made any sense to him. She should stop talking in riddles. She should sing instead. He loved it when she sang.  
  
The collar fell from around his neck, and he almost gasped, the freedom from the chains was so sweet. He would have touched his neck, if it hadn’t been so hard to raise his arms.  
  
The mistress was looking down at him, and he stared back up at her.  
  
“Charon,” she said, “stand up.”  
  
It took a while for the command to filter through, and when it did it quickly became clear that the one thing med-X could not make soft was an order. It was iron and lead, and when he did not move, his body moved for him, rolling and pulling his legs up underneath him.   
  
He staggered to his feet, swaying from side to side. His left calf was swollen; the yao-guai’s claws had not been clean, and there was infection in the cuts. His leg throbbed viciously as he put weight on it, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, only the mistress and her orders.   
  
“Good,” she said. “That’s good, Charon. Come on, now. You tell me if you need something to lean on, okay?”  
  
“Yes m-misstress,” he croaked.  
  
“Follow me.”  
  
There were a lot of bodies in the hallway. It was hard to step around them, hard to avoid slipping in their blood. He saw their faces but didn’t recognise them. Death had changed them too much, and the med-X had replaced his hatred with softness and apathy. They were dead and he did not care.   
  
The pain, from his cuts and bruises and cracked bones, was trying to scrape its way through the cotton-wool wall of med-X in his brain. He knew, in a detached sort of way, that if he didn’t take care not to slip, he would fall, and he would not be able to catch himself. He tried to pay attention to where he put his feet, but it was difficult. He was slow, and with the pain and the chems the contract had taken too much control. Vaguely, he was aware of Hancock close behind him, hovering like a shadow, and through his med-X haze he realised he would catch him if he fell.  
  
He followed Sloan through the bunker’s twisting halls. When they stepped out into the wasteland at last his legs were beginning to shake, and she looked back at him. He couldn’t gauge the expression on her face, knew only that that was the mistress and he must follow her. The mistress, the employer, the most important thing in the world. The contract could crumble to dust and she would still be the most important thing in the world. She could lead him through fire.  
  
They went down a hill, and up another one, moving slowly enough that he wouldn’t fall. As they reached the top of the second hill her pip-boy began to tick, and she stopped and turned to him.   
  
“You have to follow Hancock now, Charon,” she said. “Follow Hancock.”  
  
Hancock gripped her hand for a fleeting moment as he passed her, and led Charon across the dead grass to a building on the hill. Radiation seeped into him like water into a sponge, steadying his step, restoring his strength. It was beautiful, this radiation. It was death to so many, but to ghouls it was life.   
  
“Bethany!” Hancock called as he pushed the door open. “Got a patient for ya, doc.”  
  
There was a ghoul, a woman with her dark hair pulled into a bun and a white coat, and she smiled as she saw him.  
  
“Well, if it ain’t Mayor Hancock. It’s been a long time.” She kissed his cheek, and then looked past him to Charon, her brows rising. “What the hell happened to him?”  
  
Hancock waved a hand. “Cuts, bruises, broken bones. He’s in bad shape. Can you patch him up?”  
  
“Can you pay me?”  
  
“I got chems.” Hancock patted his pockets. “Sloan has some caps. Lots of caps. You know she’s good for it.”  
  
“The vault-dweller’s here? Haven’t seen her in months. I swear that girl’s got a death wish.” The doctor moved to Charon’s side, and gestured to a bed.   
  
Charon swayed slightly, and shook his head. “I must follow h-him,” he said, and pointed at Hancock.  
  
“Ah, hell.” Hancock pulled his hat off and ran a hand over his head. “Beth, do me a favour and go get my girl, would ya? Looks like we’re going to need her after all.”  
  
When the doctor returned, Sloan followed her. Her pip-boy was clicking so fast the sound blurred together into a hum and she took it off to set it on the table.  
  
“Too many r-rads,” Charon said.  
  
“I’ve got a lot of rad-X. I’ll live. Go lie down on the bed.”  
  
He nodded, giving her a look of relief, and tottered over to the bed, where he gingerly lowered himself onto the mattress. It was impossibly soft after god knew how long lying on that concrete floor. The med-X was beginning to wear off, but it was countered by the radiation that seeped into his muscles and bones. There was so much of it here, too much. It was beautiful, and awful. The mistress shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be standing beside the bed. She should be gone.  
  
“Go,” he croaked, and tried to raise an arm to shoo her away. She ignored him.  
  
“I’m no good at setting bones,” she said to the doctor. “We did our best with the knee, but the rest of it… And that infection terrifies me.”  
  
She nodded. “It’s good you brought him here. I’ll need your help to set the breaks and keep them steady before we can get a couple of stimpaks into him. And what the hell did this?” She pressed a hand against his left pectoral, and fluid oozed from the gashes.  
  
“Yao-guai,” he croaked, and closed his eyes. “Yao-guai, in a p-pit.”  
  
They gave him some more med-X, enough that he was floating, detached, and he barely felt it as they pressed his bones back together. He felt a tugging at his skin, a pulling; it might have hurt but he was far away, there was nothing, nothing mattered. He was in a place of peace, peace and warmth and clouds. The pain did not matter. Then came the stimpaks, and as his body healed he eased off into sleep.  
  


 

 


	57. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events have yet to really catch up to Charon.

He woke some hours later.   
  
It was dark, and the doctor sat alone at her table with a bottle of beer, a lantern shining behind her.  
  
“Hey there, champ. Welcome back.” She smiled at him. “You did a good job.”  
  
Charon pushed himself into a sitting position, and groaned as stitches pulled. He blinked down at himself and saw bandages wrapped around his chest, his shoulder, his forearm. Someone had covered him with a blanket, but he could feel tightness pressing around his calf, and knew there were bandages there too.  
  
“The wounds wouldn’t heal,” Bethany told him. “Too old for a stimpak. Sorry, champ, looks like you’re going to have some new scars.” She took a sip of her beer, and set the bottle back on the table. “Honestly we were lucky the breaks healed as well as they did. You can thank the radiation for that. Take it easy for a few weeks, though, mind. They’ll be tender. No wrestling yao-guai, or you’ll be liable to break ‘em again.”  
  
“The names,” he murmured, searching his skin for them. They would have been too old, at the least they would have scarred, but he couldn’t see them.  
  
The doctor hesitated. “The vault-dweller wouldn’t have it,” she said. “We… cut them out. I argued with her for a while about that, thought you might feel it through the med-X, but they would have scarred and she wouldn’t have it. So. Most of them weren’t deep. Just surface injuries. We cut them out and the stimpaks healed you up fine.” She shifted, as if her chair was a little uncomfortable. “The yao-guai wounds were too big, though. There’s going to be a dent in your forearm, and you’ve got some stitches, but we managed to treat the infection.”   
  
Charon nodded, and smiled to himself. Of course she wouldn’t have let those men leave their names on him. He didn’t belong to them. He belonged to _her_. They were dead, and no one would remember them.  
  
“They paid you?” he asked, pulling on his boots. “Where did they go?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t owe me nothing. You can walk right on out of here,” she said. “They made camp just across the road, where the radiation stops. Had to chase her out, in the end. I told her if she puked on my floor she was cleaning it up herself.”  
  
“Thank you.” He got to his feet and held out a hand, and she shook it with a smile.  
  
“No trouble. Nice to get some customers out here. Take care, now.”  
  
He could see their campfire from the door. As he limped across the hill, a figure separated itself from the shadows around the fire and darted through the darkness towards him. He could hear the frantic ticking of her pip-boy, and he swept her up in a hug as she reached him. Her arms went around his neck, her pip-boy clicking next to his ear, and he turned his face to press his lips against her hair.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, crushing her closer to him. “Mistress, thank you.”  
  
“Idiot,” she said, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You think I would have left you there? You don’t have to thank me, Charon. Now put me down or I’ll be sick on you.”  
  
When they got to the fire, Hancock wordlessly passed her another rad-away, and she settled down to find a vein.   
  
“Brother,” he greeted Charon with a smile. “You drag my girl to a place with that much radiation again and I’ll skin ya.”   
  
“Understood,” he said, and sat down by the fire. “You have done already. Skinned me.”  
  
“Yeah, don’t remind me.” He screwed up his face. “That was _fucked up._ Also, now I’m all outta med-X. You owe me a high.”  
  
“Understood,” he said again, smiling to himself.  
  
“Good.”  
  
Dogmeat padded in from the darkness, pressing his cold nose against Charon’s hand for a moment before going to sit by the fire.  
  
“No food, pooch?” Hancock asked him with a frown. “Come on. You can help me track something. Sunshine needs to eat.”  
  
“I’m not hungry,” she said, and made a face.  
  
“It’ll settle your stomach, and everything in your pack is full of rads. Don’t want you putting more of that shit in your body. Come on, pooch.” He grabbed Sloan’s rifle, and the dog followed him out into the night.  
  
Sloan watched him go, and then smiled at Charon across the fire. “He’s giving us some time,” she said. “Will you come sit by me?”  
  
Charon shuffled a little closer, and she laid her head on his shoulder.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For getting captured. For — for everything. All the trouble I put you through. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”  
  
“You didn’t put me through any trouble, Charon.” She brushed her knuckles against his arm. “Those men did, and they paid for it.”  
  
“You could have been rid of me,” he said. “You wouldn’t have had to worry about the contract any more, or —”  
  
“Charon, don’t—” She cut herself off, and shook her head.  
  
“See? You wouldn’t have to check your speech, you wouldn’t —”   
  
“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about — _of course_ I don’t want to be rid of you, Charon, fuck. You’re my friend, my partner, my bodyguard. You belong to me. No one gets to take you away from me.”  
  
He slipped an arm around her waist, and pulled her a little closer with a sigh.   
  
“That’s twice you’ve saved me now, Sloan,” he said, and swallowed.  
  
“I’m sure you’ll have the chance to pay me back.” She closed her eyes, and leant her head against his shoulder. “I’ll get myself into some trouble sooner or later, just wait and see. Then we’ll be even again.”  
  
They sat together, listening to the crackling of the fire. It was surreal, to be free of that place, of those men. Free. Her weight against his side was cool and welcome, and though his arm throbbed and his stitches pulled with each breath, he felt safe and almost content.  
  
“Thank you,” he said after a while.   
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You cut off the names. Thank you.”  
  
“You weren’t theirs.” She had opened her eyes, and there was a set to her jaw. “Soulless bastards. Tomorrow I want to go back and hunt through their stuff. If there’s anyone’s corpse in particular you’d like to kick…”  
  
Charon shook his head. There was no point, to him, in desecrating the dead. He might have said that he wanted them to be able to feel it but in truth he couldn’t muster the hatred for them any more. It wasn’t worth it.  
  
“Are you all right?” she asked him softly. Her fingers trailed down across the bandage wrapped around his arm. “Really. You were… you weren’t in a good place when we found you. They seriously made you fight a yao-guai?”  
  
“I pulled one of them down with me,” he said, and bent to graze his lips against her hair. She smelt of dust, and faintly of blood, but her hair was still the softest thing in the Commonwealth. “I pulled him down into the pit. I held him, and the yao-guai tore his guts out.”  
  
“And they were angry,” she deduced.  
  
“Yes.” His arm tightened around her, and he pulled her half into his lap. “Kiss me,” he pleaded, putting a hand to her face.   
  
Her eyes slitted like a cat’s, and she tipped her head up to kiss him, easing her mouth over his slower than he’d like. He felt a sudden impatience, a need for her tongue in his mouth, but she was determinedly slow, gentle, and after a moment the urgency left him.   
  
When she pulled back, he pressed his forehead against hers.   
  
“You love me,” he said. It was both a statement and a question, a need for reassurance.  
  
“I do.” She stroked his cheek.  
  
He exhaled in relief. He couldn’t tell her what the voice had said, couldn’t tell her about the voice at all, and instead he kissed his way across her cheek and claimed her lips again. His hand was in her hair, and for a moment he was lost until he felt her hands against his chest, pushing, and he pulled away.  
  
“Easy,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.”  
  
“Right,” he said, cursing himself.   
  
He eased her back onto the dirt. The rad-away had pulled from her elbow, a line of blood running down her arm, and he growled softly, reaching for the needle. He took her forearm in one hand and wiped the blood away as he eased the needle back into the crook of her elbow. Her skin felt cold under his fingers, but it was meant to, humans were meant to feel cold. He felt a prickle of fear all the same, and swallowed. If she turned ghoul because of him — or worse, straight-up died of radiation poisoning — he would never forgive himself.   
  
She smiled at him as he sat back down beside her. She looked tired.  
  
“Are you okay?” he asked.  
  
She shrugged. “I feel a bit like puking, and my head is killing me, but the fever broke a few hours ago.”  
  
“Fever?” He felt his chest clench. “It was that bad?” He took a deep breath, the movement pulling at his stitches.   
  
“Hancock already yelled at me,” she said, looking up at him out of the corner of her eye. “You don’t need to bother.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to yell,” he said softly.   
  
“I mean. I shouldn’t have stayed.” She sighed. “I was there too long. It was stupid.” She rubbed her nose, and pointed to a shape across the fire. “Could you grab my pack?” she asked him.  
  
He leant forward, reaching around the fire to grab it and pull it closer. He offered it to her, but she shook her head.   
  
“Somewhere in there,” she said, “is you gun. Left your armour back at Goodneighbor, though. Sorry. It was too much to lug around the Commonwealth.”  
  
“My gun?” He stared at the pack for a second, and then all but tore it open, reaching inside until his fingers brushed against something hard and cold. It was wrapped in some kind of cloth, and he pulled it out and set her pack aside. He laid it reverently in his lap, pushed the cloth aside, and ran his hand, almost trembling, along the familiar barrel. “My gun.”  
  
“And your shirt.” She reached reached across to rub the cloth between her finger and thumb. “Sorry if it smells like me.”  
  
He glanced at her, lifting the shirt to sniff at it. It did smell like her. He pressed it to his nasal cavity for a moment, inhaling.   
  
“Why does it smell like you?” he wondered aloud.  
  
“Because I wore it.”   
  
He stared down at her, forehead furrowing.   
  
“It is too big for you, smoothskin.”  
  
“I know that, doofus. I just wore it to bed, a couple times. I missed you. It made me feel… like you were there.”  
  
“Sappy,” he accused her, and she giggled.  
  
“Yeah. But I wasn’t sure I was going to get you back, Charon. I just…” She trailed off, watching him as he tried to work out how to get the shirt over his head without pulling his stitches. “You need some help with that?”  
  
“No,” he said stubbornly. “I can do it, it’s —” He broke off, and huffed in frustration. “My shoulder does not want to work.”  
  
She laughed. “Arms first,” she said, “and then you can hold my rad-away while I pull it over your head.”  
  
Her way was better, and when she’d sat back down beside him she leant into him with a sigh, as if the day had caught up with her. She had made it through the bunker without real injury, which was impressive, but she looked as though the past few weeks had been tough ones. She seemed… drawn. Though that might just have been the radiation.   
  
“You never answered my question,” she said, closing her eyes. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Sleeping in all that radiation helped,” he told her. “The yao-guai wounds should heal quickly.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant.” She looked up at him, her head resting against his shoulder. “You need some time? We can go wherever you like… My place at Sanctuary Hills, Diamond City. Any of the settlements in the Commonwealth. The Slog. Anywhere you want.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“To… you know. Regroup.” She blinked at him. “Charon. I found you on the floor of some filthy cell with people’s names carved into you. They had you for _weeks_. If that had happened to me back in the army I would have been enrolled in some kind of compulsory long-term psychotherapy. They would have sent me to their own special nut-house.” She slipped her arm through his. “You gotta break before you can put yourself back together again.”  
  
“We are not in the army,” Charon told her. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable.   
  
“I know. If we were, there’d be paperwork.” She gave him a rueful smile. “You can put it all in a box if you want,” she said, “but we’re going to hunker down somewhere you feel safe for a couple of weeks either way. You can rest before you have to square your shoulders and soldier on.”  
  
Somewhere he felt safe. Charon grumbled to himself, and sighed.  
  
“Diamond City,” he said.  
  
“You’re sure? With the guards…”  
  
“I like your house,” he confessed. “It… I feel safe there. I don’t know why. But not for weeks. Just for a few days.”  
  
“Okay,” she said. She found his hand with hers, and rubbed her thumb along the heel of his palm. “After that we can go to Goodneighbor and get real stoned, or something.”  
  
He chuckled. “If you wish, mistress.”  
  
They sat together for a moment, looking into the fire. When her breathing changed, he felt it rather than heard it. Pressed against his side, her ribs shuddered, and he looked down at her in concern.  
  
“Sloan?”  
  
She shook her head, and took his hand, raising it to press his knuckles to her lips.  
  
“I found you,” she said, her voice thin, strained.  
  
“You did.”  
  
“I really didn’t know we would. When you were… Did you know I was coming?” She looked up at him. “Did you know?”  
  
“I…” He swallowed, and took his hand from her to slide it around her waist, and pull her closer. “I hoped. I wanted… It was important to me, to see you again. I wanted to survive that long. Just long enough…”  
  
She let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner. I tried, I —”  
  
“Stop that,” he scolded her, bending to press his lips against her hair.   
  
“It’s just that there were so many things to — I was still hurting when I woke up, I lost a whole day because I couldn’t move fast enough, and then I had to get the money and Hancock and Nick, and we made the drop —”  
  
“Smoothskin, you saved me.”  
  
“But if I’d been quicker, maybe they wouldn’t have hurt you, maybe…” She trailed off, and grimaced.  
  
“What does it matter?” he asked her, taking a breath against the tightness in his chest. “You saved me, you’re _here_. It is a few scars, beauty. They don’t matter.”  
  
“It’s _not_ a f-few scars! I mean of _course_ they don’t _matter_ but it’s not about the scars, it’s about — about what they did, about — _Fuck_.” She dug her fingers into her hair, and then took a deep breath. She let it out slowly, and after a moment some of the tension left her, and she dropped her hands back into her lap. “Sorry,” she said at last. “It’s just… been a long couple of weeks.   
  
“A day or two sooner would have made no difference,” he told her. He shifted, turning a little to look at her. “You want to know what I thought, in the cell?”  
  
She looked up at him, her brows pinched together, and nodded.  
  
“I hoped you were safe.There were times I was certain I was going to die there, that even if you came you would not succeed, or you would be too late. But I was determined not to die until I saw you again. That was…” He let his eyes wander over the campsite, his gaze resting a moment on the fire. “I don’t know why that was so important. If I was going to die anyway, what did it matter? But it did.” He shrugged, and looked back at her. She was leaning forward a little, curious. “I knew you would come for me,” he told her. “I was not sure if that was something I should _want,_ if… You should be safe, you should not risk yourself for me.”  
  
She reached for him, winding her arms around his neck and pressing her lips against his neck.  
  
“I will always come for you, Charon,” she said.  
  
He swallowed, and rested his cheek against her hair.  
  
“I know.”

 

 


	58. Soft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~Bonding~

  
Hancock had brought back a radstag fawn, the same meal Charon had eaten with the mistress the night before he had been taken. Even the smell bothered him, but when Sloan pulled the meat from the spit and began to carve he truly felt his hunger for the first time in a week. He’d devoured his share, licking the juices from his fingers, and Sloan watched him with an affectionate grin.  
  
She fell asleep early, with the rad-away still in her arm and her head resting on Hancock’s chest.  
  
The man himself was sitting up against a tree and watching Charon over the fire, his black eyes reflecting the flames. There was something in his stare that made Charon uneasy, and he looked into the fire instead.  
  
“Hey,” he said.  
  
“Hmm?” Charon kept his eyes on the flames.  
  
“What she did to you. Making you walk.”  
  
He felt a flare of defensiveness. “It was smart,” he said. He shifted his shoulders, the movement pulling at his stitches. “It didn’t hurt so much, with the med-X.”  
  
Hancock chuckled. “Yeah, I bet you were flying pretty high,” he said. “No; it was bad, but it ain’t like we had a lot of options. I meant…  it wasn’t the worst thing that’s been done to you.”  
  
Charon looked up at him. There was a curiosity in his eyes, a dark and suspicious one.  
  
“No.”  
  
“I cut people’s names off you.” He scowled. “It was fucked up, but I did it ‘cause _she_ couldn’t. And it was important.” He shook his head. His hand was in Sloan’s hair, fingers sliding gently through to the ends, over and over. “That shit, with the names… That ain’t the worst thing either.”  
  
“No. It was bad. But it wasn’t the worst.”  
  
“What was the worst?”  
  
“I don’t — I don’t remember,” he said, and grimaced. “Why would you ask me that?”  
  
Hancock looked away, his fingers still carding through Sloan’s hair. “Yeah. Forget I asked.”  
  
Charon shook his head, and looked back into the fire. “If I had to guess, the indoctrination. I cannot remember it, but… but I think it was bad. Very bad.” He took a deep breath. “Did she tell you, what the contract is made from?”  
  
“…Yeah. Yeah, she did.”  
  
“I do not remember it. I do not allow myself to remember it.” Dogmeat had settled down beside him, and he glanced down at the dog, dropping a hand to scratch behind his ear. He made himself look up, and met Hancock’s eyes just for a moment. “Another time, in a room… You ever have to live off radiation?”  
  
“No. There was… a kid.” His jaw was tight. “We found him in a fridge. Two hundred years in a fucking fridge living off radiation.”  
  
“A _child?_ ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Charon gaped at him, a feeling of horror crawling over his skin. “And he didn’t… He was sane? After _two hundred years?_ ”  
  
Hancock shrugged. “Kids adapt. They’re freaks like that. Or maybe he _was_ crazy, and we just didn’t see it.”  
  
“I lost my mind in the dark, in the… alone. There was not much left of me. If I could have, I would have killed myself.”  
  
“I don’t blame you.” Hancock looked away, past the fire and into the shadows. “I didn’t come because she asked me,” he said at last. “I came because you deserve better.”  
  
Charon looked at him in surprise, and then shook his head. “I deserve — I don’t deserve —” He stopped, and tried to gather his thoughts. “I think there is a reason I’m a slave,” he said at last. “I am bad at being free. I make bad choices. I do not control myself well.”  
  
“You can’t remember what you did, to put you in this position.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then how do you know?” Hancock’s dark eyes were sharp. “You ain’t the same person you were then. You can’t even _remember_ who you were then. Who cares what you did? You’d do something different now, right?”  
  
Charon took a deep breath. “I’m free in Goodneighbor,” he said. “You let me do what I want, you and — and Sloan. Half an hour I was free and I started a fight. I destroyed your bar. I make bad decisions. There is a reason I am not free.”  
  
“You don’t know that. You might not have done anything. You could’ve been a kid for all you know. You were _indoctrinated,_ you think they didn’t lie? You think they didn’t tell you it was your own damn fault, just to keep your head down? That it was better this way?” He narrowed his eyes. “There are plenty of evil shitheads in this wasteland. You know what we do with ‘em? We kill ‘em. They’re dead. You know what we don’t do? We _don’t_ set Yao-guai on them for _fun_. We _don’t_ shut them in dark rooms and drive them crazy. We don’t make them slaves. It don’t matter what you did, Ferryman. You _still_ deserve better.”  
  
Charon didn’t know what to say to that. He sat and listened to the crackle of the fire.  
  
“Do you ever regret it?” he asked eventually.  
  
“What, the ghoul thing?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“No.” Hancock snorted a laugh. “Plenty of other stuff I regret. Nearly all of it, actually. This? No. Besides, the high was incredible. Totally worth it.”  
  
Charon lifted a hand, examining the torn skin, the jagged ridges of hardened scar tissue.  
  
“I can’t imagine anything could possibly be worth this,” he murmured.  
  
“Yeah, well you and I don’t think the same. ‘Sides, I wanted this. A new face, a new start. I got what I wanted.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “And I don’t have to look at that bastard in the mirror any more.”  
  
Charon studied him over the fire. “You used to live in Diamond City. You can’t go back there now.”  
  
He gave him a long, sad look. “Who told you that?”  
  
“Wiseman. At the Slog. He said you helped them.”  
  
“No.” He looked back out into the shadows again. “I wanted to, but…”  
  
“You tried.”  
  
“I failed.”  
  
“He said that when the mayor —”  
  
“My _brother,_ ” Hancock hissed, “didn’t listen to me. We _grew up_ together and I just — I couldn’t stop it from happening. I couldn’t even convince the others not to vote for him. And these people, the ghouls — they _knew_ that everyone hated them so much they would be happy to throw ‘em out on the streets and watch ‘em die, and they _still_ wanted to stay. Because what the fuck other choice did they have? The other choice was Goodneighbor, which was a _shit-hole,_ and wandering out into the wasteland. Most of them died. And I did _fuck all._ ”  
  
Charon stared at him.  
  
Sloan, still half-asleep, started mumbling something soothing but incomprehensible. Hancock glanced down at her, then sighed, and let his head fall back against the tree.  
  
“Go sit in the field,” he said. “It’ll help you heal.”  
  
He did, if only to give Hancock some time alone with his thoughts. He walked out into the middle of the field, away from the house, and lay back on the grass with his hands behind his head.  
  
The radiation was strong, rejuvenating him, restoring tired muscles and accelerating the healing of his wounds. That alone would have felt spectacular, even without the extra buzz from the radiation. It chased away the darker thoughts his conversation with Hancock had stirred up, and he closed his eyes, enjoying the soft warmth of the high. He could even feel new teeth beginning to push their way through his gums. If he stayed here a few days he might be healed entirely, but he didn’t want to spend the time. The mistress wanted to go through the bunker and take whatever they had of value. He didn’t particularly want to go back to the bunker, but if she went, he wanted to be there also. And afterwards… all he wanted was to go to her fortress in Diamond City where they could lock the door and spend however long they wanted in warmth and safety.  
  
When he came back, just before dawn, Hancock was half-asleep, blinking blearily. He had removed the rad-away from the crook of Sloan’s arm, and she was curled around him, her hand inside his coat, her cheek resting just below his heart. They looked young and soft and comfortable, and Charon smiled.  
  
_They are perfect,_ he thought, and was surprised at himself. There was a time he’d have been jealous, or even disgusted. He thought back to the first time he had seen them together, how incongruous it had seemed to see her throw her arms around him. Charon had been appalled, then, to discover their relationship. Now it seemed strange that they would ever have been apart.  
  
“If you wanted to sleep, you should have called me back,” he said to Hancock, settling on the ground by the remains of the fire. He prodded it back to life with a stick, and added a piece of wood to keep it going.  
  
Hancock yawned. “Yeah, yeah. Feelin’ better?”  
  
“Much. Thank you.” He hesitated. “And… for… getting me out of that place.”  
  
“Well, I already owed ya for saving Sloan from that deathclaw. We’ll call it even.”  
  
“But—”  
  
Hancock scowled at him, and Charon closed his mouth again.  
  
Sloan made a few sleepy noises, and almost smacked Hancock in the face as she stretched.  
  
“Morning, lovers,” she murmured. “I need coffee.”  
  
“Morning to you too, Sunshine. You’re making it.”  
  
She smirked at him. “Fine. Pass my pack.”  
  
She boiled some water in a pan, poured it into three tin army mugs, and mixed in some freeze-dried coffee.  
  
“Let me tell you guys about _lattes,_ ” she said as she stirred, and gave a heartfelt sigh. “God, they were amazing. You froth up all this milk and you can add flavoured syrup like caramel or white chocolate. Hazelnut was the best. Then you sprinkle something on the foam, cinnamon or chocolate flakes. Hot and sweet, three shots of espresso, caffeine kick like a brick between the eyes. Gets you through those all-nighters, makes you feel warm on cold winter days.” She pulled out a bunch of sugar packets she had scavenged from a diner, and poured one into two of the makeshift mugs. She passed the unsweetened one to Charon with a smile. “Lattes aren’t _quite_ up there with cheesecake, but they’re one of those home comforts I really miss.”  
  
Hancock sat with his can between his hands, blinking blearily, until she took it off him again and set it by the fire.  
  
“Didn’t you sleep?”  
  
He shook his head. “Big guy needed to go sit in radiation.”  
  
“You should have woken me to take the late watch.”  
  
“Yeah, but you ain’t well.” He shrugged. “Coffee, jet, I’ll be fine.”  
  
“We’re in no hurry, light of my life,” she said. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep your coffee warm by the fire.”  
  
He studied her face for a moment, his mouth twitching into a smile. At last he nodded.  
  
“Wake me in an hour,” he said, stretching out with his head resting on her thigh.  
  
She stole his hat, her fingers drifting along the ridges of his skin. They sat silently sipping their coffee until Hancock began to snore quietly, and she giggled softly to herself.  
  
“A man without a nose shouldn’t snore, right? He’s lucky he’s cute.”  
  
“ _Cute_.” Charon made a face.  
  
She looked over at him, a grin slowly creeping across her face.  
  
“You’re really going to criticise my taste in men?”  
  
“I am not that much of a fool.” He watched her, sipping at her coffee, and let his eyes fall to Hancock’s face. “You shouldn’t call me _lover_ in front of him,” he said.  
  
“Why not? It’s not as if he doesn’t know.”  
  
“But…” Charon shifted, uncomfortable, “he might… he might not…”  
  
“Charon, would you relax?” She gave him a fond smile. “He’s in favour of it. You _know_ he wants to watch.”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. “I thought he was joking about that.”  
  
She chuckled. “Nope.”  
  
Charon was quiet for a moment. “He… he was talking about… He said the mayor of Diamond City is his brother.”  
  
She closed her eyes briefly, and sighed. “Yeah. That’s… a whole thing.”  
  
“He helped the ghouls. When they were thrown out.”  
  
She shifted slightly, her back against the trunk of the tree, her fingers still tracing Hancock’s scars.  
  
“His family weren’t exactly Diamond City blue-bloods,” she said, her voice hushed. “They just lived in this shack down by the water. But they had a happy childhood. Just a normal family, the way he tells it. And then McDonough… I guess he decided he wanted to be bigger than that, for the Upper Stands folks to accept him as one of them. Honestly he sounds like he was always a bit of a bully, but I guess boys treat their little sisters better than their little brothers.” Hancock shifted in her lap, sighing in his sleep, and she smiled. “This one here campaigned to keep the ghouls in the city, and when that didn’t work he pulled all the strings he could to keep them safe out there. He took them food, tried to help some of them get to Goodneighbor in one piece. He tried so hard to convince McDonough to soften his stance. He _begged_ him. And he just… didn’t care. These people John’d known all his life were gleefully dragging their next-door neighbours into the ruins, and McDonough was watching with this smile… They may as well have lined them all up in the town square and shot them. I think he still feels like he could have done more to convince people, like leaving was the easy way out. But he did all he could.”  
  
“This is why you love him.”  
  
She shrugged. “That, and the way he makes my toes curl.” She shot Charon a look. “Listen… Not a lot of people know that stuff. About his brother, who he used to be. They just know him as Hancock. He trusted you. So…”  
  
“I will not discuss it,” he said, and he saw her relax, just a little.  
  
He wasn’t sure quite how he felt about being trusted with this information. Hancock had always confused him, for all they’d formed some kind of awkward friendship, and now he owed him a life debt on top of everything. Why tell him that? What did it achieve? Perhaps he had just been tired. The day before had been salvation for Charon, but it must have been tense for them.  
  
“Are you feeling better?” Sloan asked him, and smothered a yawn. “After sitting in all that radiation, I mean.”  
  
“Some,” he said.  
  
“No pain?”  
  
He could not lie to her. He cupped his hands around his warm tin mug.  
  
“Some,” he said again.  
  
“I’ll give you some caps. You can go get some more med-X from Bethany.”  
  
He shook his head. “No more med-X.”  
  
“But if you’re in pain —”  
  
“No more med-X. I am used to pain.” That was not the right thing to say. Her face contorted, and he hastily added, “It — it is temporary. Nothing to concern yourself over, smoothskin.”  
  
“Charon.”  
  
“Please. You — you are in pain, sometimes. You tell me not to bother you about it.”  
  
“Am I bothering you?” She gave him a sheepish smile.  
  
“No. But that shit is habit-forming, and I have had too much of it. It is not worth the risk.”  
  
“It’s your decision. If you change your mind, just let me know.” She looked down at Hancock in her lap, tracing the lines of his skin with her fingers. “Will you be fit to travel today?”  
  
“Yes. I want to get away from this place.”  
  
She nodded, as if she expected as much.  
  
“Are you sure you want to come to the bunker with us? It… might fuck you up.”  
  
“I want to go with you,” he said.  
  
She smiled to herself. “Honestly I’m not that thrilled with the idea of letting you out of my sight, so I’m not going to argue with you. So long as you promise me you’ll get yourself out of there if you need to.”  
  
“You do not need to baby me.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow at him, and after a moment he sighed.  
  
“Fine. I promise.”  
  
“You really think I’m babying you?”  
  
There was a sadness in her eyes, and the muscles tightened in his jaw.    
  
“No,” he admitted, wrapping his hands around his mug. “You mean well.”  
  
“But I’m fucking it up.”  
  
He shifted, resettling himself.  
  
“You’re not fucking it up, smoothskin. I just — I am not used to this,” he confessed. “This sort of… I don’t know. Bad things are dealt with by locking them away. I am not soft. I do not want to be soft.”  
  
“You’re not soft,” she agreed. “But allowing you the room to recover from this isn’t babying, Charon. It doesn’t make you soft.”  
  
“I know,” he said.  
  
There was a _but_ on the edge of his tongue, and he bit the inside of his cheek, and looked away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trek back home is going to take a while.


	59. Bunker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'M NAHT LOOTIN'

  
Coming back to the bunker was harder than he had expected.  
  
Hancock had gone to trade with the doctor, Bethany, and the radiation from her hill was enough to restore what energy his nap had not. Still, he seemed content to leave most of the looting to Sloan. He took only chems, and even left some of the more commonplace ones. Sloan, on the other hand, took everything that looked like it could be useful, and several things that didn’t.  
  
Charon leant against a wall, taking the weight off his injured leg. Coming back here… He had expected fear, perhaps even flash-backs. Ghosts and shadows. Somehow it was worse that there was nothing like that. The people had made the place terrible. With them dead, it was just… empty. Stark lights and concrete walls.  
  
It was the normalcy of it all that bothered him so much. Watching Sloan looking through the pockets of these men, in this place, as if they were any raiders out in the Commonwealth… It bothered him in a way he couldn’t express. Like the whole damn thing had been something he constructed in his head.    
  
“How did you find me?” he asked eventually.  
  
“Nick helped me out. He has memories, of this sort of thing.” Her hair fell across her face as she bent to pull some ammo from a corpse’s belt. “There was a note with your stuff, with a drop-off point for the caps. Went there, dropped a bag, and waited. Couple of guys turned up. We watched them for a while. Snuck up at night, killed one, interrogated the other. Would you believe, we actually played Good Cop, Bad Cop.”  
  
“You were the bad cop?”  
  
She snorted. “No. They wouldn’t let me join in. Hancock was bad cop, I was only allowed to sit in the corner and glare at him.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Hancock took the cigarette from his mouth, and grinned. “Can’t get info from a dead man. Didn’t want her to haul off and murder the guy. Besides, the person standing angrily on the other side of the room is, like… Here’s someone threatening to feed you your own tongue, and this other guy looks even meaner, so what’re _they_ gonna do?” He knocked the ash from the end of his cigarette. “He gave us some information, but not enough to go on. Eventually we just let the fucker go. ‘Course, when he ran his ass straight back here, we got the pooch to track him.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “You wanna thank the guy who led us here, he’s about three feet outside the door. The one with the hole between the eyes.”  
  
Sloan rolled a corpse over with the toe of her boot.  
  
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord.”  
  
“Damn right.”  
  
“You killed a lot of people for me,” Charon murmured.  
  
“They were in my way.”  
  
She was not a brutal person, and nor was she cruel. She was rarely truly angry. But Charon remembered how fierce she was upon discovering Kent had been kidnapped, and wondered what her reaction had been when she had woken up and found him missing.  
  
There were a lot of bodies in the bunker, more than he had expected, but Charon had never actually counted the number of his captors. They were never all in the same place at the same time. He was fairly sure he hadn’t even seen many of these men. He drifted away from Sloan, searching the faces of the dead. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He didn’t think it was just being back here, among the bodies of those who had tormented him. It was something else, something lingering on the edges of his mind. Every so often he would be gone a little too long and Sloan called out for him softly, and he returned to her side, only to wander off again a little while later. They picked their way through the bunker like this, with Charon making strange orbits around his mistress like a comet .  
  
None of them went into his cell. They did, however, check the _other_ cells. One of them held a man who had not been long dead, three fingers missing from his right hand. He was emaciated. Charon crouched by his body, far too aware that this could have been him. If she had not come for him they could have locked the door and let hunger and his wounds take care of him for them. He could have rotted away in this place, in the dark.  
  
He was dimly aware that he had started to shake.  
  
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Hancock said in a tight voice.  
  
“Was he alive?” Charon croaked. “Yesterday… was he alive?”  
  
Sloan materialised by his side, and put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“No. He was dead already.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “I shouldn’t have brought you back here.”  
  
He shook his head, and got to his feet.  
  
“It’s fine, mistress.”  
  
“You and I seem to have very different understandings of what that word means,” she said.  
  
“It’s fine —”  
  
“It is _not fine_.” She threw out her arms, gesturing to the cell they were standing in. “ _You_ are not fine. This place is _not fine._ _None of this is fine._ ”  
  
“Hey! Easy.” Hancock caught her around the waist and turned her to face him.  
  
Something passed between them, some sort of silent conversation, and Charon turned his gaze back to the man on the floor.  
  
He had been here a long time, long enough for his beard to grow and his hair to mat. His face looked young still, but there were grey streaks in his hair. He might have children. A woman waiting for him. A woman who could not come to save him.  
  
“Charon.” She placed her gentle hand on his arm. “I wasn’t yelling at you,” she said. “I’m not angry with you.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I shouldn’t have brought you back here,” she said again, bitterness creeping into her voice.  
  
He didn’t know how to respond to that, beyond telling her it was fine.  
  
“I did not have to come,” he said at last.  
  
She gave him a long look, and nodded.  
  
They worked their way through the bunker to the final room, the place where the king had spent his time and where some of the men had eaten each night. Charon paused at the door, his eyes floating around the room until they reached the high-backed chair, where the man himself was sitting, slumped, a bloom of dark red where his left eye had been.  
  
He made a circuit of the room while Sloan looked through the bookcase, muttering under her breath and pulling volumes from the shelves to shove into her pack. The thing that had been gnawing at him was growing stronger. He nearly had it. He looked back at the king again, alone on his throne, and suddenly he knew.  
  
“Black hair,” he said abruptly.  
  
“Hmm?” Sloan looked over at him.  
  
“The man with the black hair. Where is he?”  
  
She and Hancock exchanged glances.  
  
“Bunch of ‘em had dark hair,” Hancock said, but Charon shook his head.  
  
“No. Black. Long, past his jaw. Straight teeth.”  
  
“That means vault-dweller, right?” Sloan looked first at Hancock, then back at Charon. “They don’t have orthodontists out here, do they? Straight teeth means vault-dweller.”  
  
“Could just mean lucky,” Hancock shrugged. “You see the guy he means?”  
  
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying that much attention. I mean, I was focused more on their guns than their hair.”  
  
“He is not here,” Charon said, his voice more strained than he wanted. “That means he got away.”  
  
She nodded, slowly, and pressed her lips together.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I don’t know where he would have gone. I don’t know what we’d use to get Dogmeat to track him.”  
  
Hancock lit a cigarette, and offered him the packet. Charon took one, hating the tremor in his hand as he held it out for him to light.  
  
“I’ll put the word out,” Hancock said, slipping his lighter back into his pocket. “He’ll show up eventually. And when he does, you can kill him yourself.”  
  
Charon nodded, and tried to quell the flare of anxiety he was feeling. He was very much aware that Hancock was attempting, slightly awkwardly, to be kind to him, to ease his disquiet, and Charon was trying very hard not to lash out at him for it. He loathed weakness, especially in himself, and it deeply bothered him that Hancock was here to see it. He didn’t mind _her_ seeing his weakness. There had been too many moments of it since he had met her, and he trusted her now, knew that _she_ knew when he needed quiet and when he needed distracting. But Hancock…  
  
“Let’s get out of here,” Sloan said, hoisting her pack.  
  
“Here, that’s too much,” Hancock said. “Give me some of that crap.”  
  
“It’s not crap, it’s _useful_.”  
  
“Books ain’t useful.”  
  
“Bite your tongue, John Hancock!”  
  
He chuckled. “You sound like your mother.”  
  
“And how would you know that?”  
  
“Just a guess.”  
  
There was something strangely comforting about the sound of their bickering. Domestic, familiar. It wasn’t right, in this place.  
  
Sloan looked up at him, her eyes shining with amusement.  
  
“Ready to go, killer? Got everything? Sure you don’t want to kick anyone’s corpse?”  
  
He shook his head. “They are dead. I don’t want to spend any more time on them.”  
  
“Then let’s hit the road.”  
  
Charon paused in the doorway, looking back at the king on his bloody throne. His face was frozen in an expression of surprise, as if he had sat here as the gunshots grew closer and told himself it wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be happening. Abrupt. Sudden.  
  
Seeing him felt the same way. Abrupt. This place had been a nightmare and he’d walked out of it in a dream, and being back here now, the place silent and lifeless… There was a starkness to it. It was too quick. The king should not have been this easy to kill. There was no final monologue, no drawn-out battle. He was just _dead._  
  
It didn’t feel right.  
  
“Charon?”  
  
He tore his eyes away from the corpse on its high chair. She was waiting for him at the end of the hall, concern on her face.  
  
“I am coming, mistress,” he said.  
  
It was odd, stepping through the bunker door and out into the brightness of midday. Unsettling. His memory of passing that threshold the day before was muddled, twisted with drugs and pain and the iron teeth of the order. He hadn’t paid attention to the door then, just to her, his mistress, leading him to safety. Now he lingered, running a hand along the doorframe, anxiety pricking at the back of his neck. Like some phantom was standing behind him, a ghostly gun to his back.  
  
The others waited silently until he was done, and then said nothing as they set off for home.  
  
_Home_. It had been all he had been thinking about for days. He had never had a home before, and in truth, he didn’t have one now — and yet somewhere in his bones he _yearned_ for it. For what? Diamond City? Goodneighbor? He pictured both of them, and neither seemed to fit the strange feeling of longing. Home. Not a place, maybe. Just… somewhere with her, somewhere safe, somewhere… like that cave, where she’d told him she loved him, or… why was he thinking of that church in Nahant? Christ… She had panicked and he had lost control… Why was _that_ a place he thought of? What about that meant home to him? What did that word even _mean?_  
  
He looked over at Sloan. She had slipped a piece of gum into her mouth, and was chewing thoughtfully with her eyes fixed somewhere far away. What was home to her? She liked her house in Diamond City — it was where she kept her things — and she had her home in Sanctuary Hills, but it was Goodneighbor she returned to. Somehow it didn’t yet feel like home to him. Perhaps no place ever would.  
  
He glanced down at Hancock, and realised with a start that he was watching him.  
  
“Hey,” he said.  
  
“…Yes?”  
  
“You mind if I make an observation?”  
  
He did, a little, but Hancock had been kind — hell, he’d saved his life — and he owed him for it. He shrugged.  
  
“Go ahead,” he said.  
  
“You ain’t as angry as I thought you’d be.”  
  
“Angry?”  
  
“Well, yeah. You’ve been angry at _me_ before. While ago now, back in that rad storm.” He chuckled. “You were _pissed_. And you’ve been angry at Sunshine, back in Goodneighbor. Angry enough to yell. But you ain’t angry about this. Just surprised me, is all.”  
  
Charon shrugged again, forcing down a frisson of anxiety. This would not eat at him.    
  
“They are all dead,” he said. “All but one. Why bother being angry? It is a waste of energy.”  
  
“Most people ain’t that logical about it,” he said with a dry note to his voice.  
  
“No,” Charon allowed. “But anger is… fast. Hot-blooded. After a while, it burns away. I was there for a long time.”  
  
“Around two and a half weeks,” Sloan told him. Her voice was soft, and she looked out towards the horizon with her brows pinched together.  
  
“A long time,” Charon repeated. “The anger did not sustain itself. I wasn’t angry with them; I _hated_ them.” He closed his eyes briefly, and suppressed a sigh. “But there is no point in hating them now, when I am free of them, and they are dead. I don’t want to keep them in my head.”  
  
“Smart,” Hancock allowed.  
  
He gave him a searching look.  
  
“You have people in your head?” he asked him tentatively.  
  
“Vic, mostly,” Hancock said, flicking the ash from the end of his cigarette. “And the guy I used to be. And my brother, but he’s still alive, so I figure it ain’t a waste to keep on hating him.”  
  
Charon did not ask about Vic. He wasn’t sure he had the right to know.  
  
“ _You_ are alive,” he pointed out.  
  
“ _I’m_ alive. The guy I _used_ to be is dead. And he’s gonna _stay_ dead.”  
  
There was a set to his jaw and a look in his eye that kept Charon from responding. He looked away instead, out over the wasteland, the hills and the horizon.  
  
It was hard to orient himself. A part of him was still in that fucking cell, shut off from the outside world. He found the sun, hiding behind the clouds, and realised they must be heading east.  
  
“I killed one of them,” he said eventually. He had told Sloan, but not Hancock, and perhaps this would help the man understand. “It was a game to them, before. They toyed with me, but that was all. When I killed that man it was not a game any more. I pulled him down into the pit with me and the yao-guai tore his guts out. It ate them while he screamed.”  
  
Hancock blew a lungful of smoke towards the sky.  
  
“Bet that felt pretty good.”  
  
“Yes. That’s why they… The cuts, the broken bones… You understand? I _earned_ that beating. It is mine. That is why I’m not angry.” He shook his head, gazing up at the grey sky. “They wanted to kill me for what I did, and they couldn’t. Their revenge was… unfinished. I earned it.” He grimaced to himself, and took a breath. “It was worth it. I would do it again.”  
  
“You won,” he said.  
  
Charon shifted his shoulders, and sighed. “No. A small victory, perhaps. I made them hate me. But they would have killed me eventually. I couldn’t fight back any more.”  
  
“You’re alive, and they’re dead. You won.”  
  
He let it go. He had not won anything. He was lucky not to be dead. _They_ had won, perhaps, Hancock and Sloan. Charon never won. He was not a player; he was a piece in the game. The men had not even wanted him for his own sake. They’d wanted him to get to Sloan. A hostage to be bartered with.  
  
He knew this, and _still_ … Why wasn’t he angry? Hancock was right. Why wasn’t he angry with these people who had starved him and hurt him? They’d killed that man in the other cell. They set a fucking _yao-guai_ on him.  
  
And none of it would have happened to him if he hadn’t been stupid enough to get fucking caught in the first place.  
  
There was a sour taste of bile at the back of his throat. He tightened his grip on his gun, and hissed as pain lanced through his forearm.  
  
Sloan glanced over at him, and the look of concern on her face made him want to hit something.  
  
“Are you —”  
  
“ _I’m fine,_ ” he snapped, and Sloan turned her face away as if she hadn’t spoken. A wave of shame rolled over him, and he grumbled. “I am fine,” he said again. “The stupid — the stitches pull on my arm if I clench my hand. I can’t pull the fucking trigger properly.”  
  
She nodded, but said nothing.  
  
Hancock stared at her as if in disbelief. He shook his head, and kept his eyes on the ground as he walked until something in him seemed to overflow and he turned to Charon, throwing out a hand in a gesture of frustration.  
  
“Look, you don’t gotta pretend this shit weren’t _fucked up,_ all right?”  
  
Charon took a half-step away from him.  
  
“I fucking — I _know,_ ” he said, baring his teeth. “But what fucking good does it do me?”  
  
Hancock of all fucking people should know what it was to need to be strong, to give an image of security, capability. Any sign of weakness and it didn’t matter how much his people loved him, he’d be dragged down from his throne and devoured. For all he was generous, even charitable, Hancock was not soft. He was all sharp edges, an iron fist in a velvet glove.  
  
“I don’t fucking know. Better than whatever the fuck’s happening now.”  
  
“It is not your business,” he growled. “I would sooner forget it happened.”  
  
Hancock looked as though he was about to laugh, but instead he shook his head, and grimaced.  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
Charon frowned to himself, and shook his head. He tried to forget about it, to put it out of his mind, but he found himself shooting looks at the shorter ghoul. He had told him shit, by the fire, about a past he didn’t want. But he hadn’t forgotten it. It lived in him, something he regretted, something that pained him. And for all that, he was not soft. What was it he did, to keep those who didn’t love him from tearing his castle down around his ears? That shit with the smile, the swagger… it wasn’t an _act,_ but…  
  
Eventually Hancock caught him looking, and made a face halfway between a sneer and a smile.  
  
“You want something?”  
  
Charon hesitated. _It doesn’t make you soft,_ Sloan had said, but he sure as fuck felt it. That moment in the cell, by the dead man… Standing in the room with the long table, realising Black-hair was missing and feeling like the ground had disappeared beneath him… He had felt disoriented. Out of control. A part of him still did.  
  
Hancock had to be strong. Yet the night before he had shared a vulnerability. A _weakness._ And he had trusted that Charon wouldn’t use that against him.  
  
“You want to help?” he asked.  
  
Hancock shrugged, and Charon looked away.  
  
“What do you do when… you feel… weak?” Charon grimaced, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “I fucking hate…” he gestured in frustration, “… _this._ ”  
  
“Take a buffout.” Hancock said. He perched his cigarette between his lips and took a drag.  
  
“No, I mean… not _physically_ weak.” He huffed a sigh. “I meant… metaphorically. This — this is _stupid_. Bad things are dealt with — Why did you say that to me? Before. Why did you — Of _course_ it was fucked up but that does not _matter_.” He bared his teeth. “This — you, _her,_ the bunker —  I am reacting in ways I can’t control. Weakness. It is _pathetic_ and I want it to stop. So tell me: what do you do?”  
  
Hancock gave him a long, steady look.  
  
“…Take a buffout,” he said.  
  
Charon frowned at him. “You are not being serious.”  
  
“What?” he shrugged. “Buffout if you’re feelin’ weak, daytripper if shit’s too real, med-X if you’re hurtin’… Cures for what ails ya.” He grinned.  
  
“That cannot be healthy.”  
  
He snorted a laugh. “I left _healthy_ behind a loooong time ago. The name of the game is survival. You do what you gotta do to stay alive. And so long as you’re not keeping others from living their lives, their way? No judgement.”  
  
“The trick,” said Sloan, “is working out what you can treat chemically, and what needs to be cut out so it doesn’t fester and kill you slow.” She shot him a smirk. “Metaphorically.”  
  
“Anyway, you’ve lived longer than me,” Hancock said to him. “What do you usually do?”  
  
“Denial and repression.”  
  
“And he’s giving _me_ shit about _healthy,_ ” he said to Sloan. “You call that a coping mechanism, Ferryman?”  
  
“What is my alternative? This shit with _recovery,_ ” he sneered, “I don’t know what to do with that. Weakness must be _hidden,_ ” he said insistently. “Otherwise it will be punished.”  
  
Hancock was silent for a moment, his eyes on the ground in front of him, and then he dug in his coat pocket and pulled out a jar of pills.  
  
“Here,” he said, holding it out to him and rattling it a little.  
  
Charon’s lips twitched into a small smile, and he shook his head.  
  
“No. But… thank you.” He looked over at Sloan, studying her profile. “What about you?” he asked her. She had been strangely quiet. “What do _you_ do when you feel weak?”  
  
Sloan blew a bubble with her gum and let it pop.  
  
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m a girl, girls are allowed to have emotional reactions to things. So I don’t have to feel like I’m weak when I do.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I saw a lot of big hardcore motherfuckers have panic attacks at the army’s PTSD camp. You stop feeling weak when you see a fifty year old sergeant-major turn into a babbling mess whenever he hears a vertibird land.” She gave him a wry smile. “Shit happens. Reacting to it doesn’t make you weak. You know that. Wounds heal, even the ones in your head.”  
  
“You went to PTSD camp? After your partner was shot?”  
  
She gave him a nervous look out of the corner of her eye, and hesitated.  
  
“No. It — it was after that. Another time.”  
  
“Leave it,” Hancock said in a quiet voice.  
  
Charon’s nerves prickled. It disturbed him that there were things about this woman he had spent six months with that she hadn’t told him. Things she had suffered with and not shared. He’d let himself believe there was nothing about her he didn’t know. Why? Just from living with her, watching her? Should she have poured her life out before him? There had been times he would have rolled his eyes if she’d tried.  
  
She’d lived a whole life he had no knowledge of, just scraps. Fragments of the Sino-American war that amounted to minutes, if that. Generalised bits and pieces of college or her home life. Barely anything about her career, or her childhood. She had a brother but he didn’t even know his name.  
  
“It was a hard war,” she said eventually. “I only saw… I wasn’t on active duty for long. Nate saw a lot worse than I did.”  
  
“I should not have asked.”  
  
“No, it… it’s fine. I just… need a bit of a run-up to talk about that shit. It wasn’t like the other time. There were a lot of rules of war that were just… I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”  
  
“You don’t need to, smoothskin.”  
  
“No, I should talk about it more often.” She kicked the sole of her boot against the ground, sending up a cloud of dust. “It’s good to talk.”  
  
“Cut it out,” said Hancock, “so’s it won’t fester.”  
  
“That’s right.” She smiled at him. “Anyway, there were a lot of tough soldiers there, at the camp. People I respected, that everyone respected. It didn’t matter that they had night terrors and shit like that. You supported each other.”  
  
“I prefer denial and repression,” Charon grumbled.  
  
“I’m not going to push you on this,” she said. “You’ve dealt with more crap than I have over the years. If that’s how you want to do it, that’s how we’ll do it.”  
  
He eyed her suspiciously.  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“Nor do I,” Hancock said, and she laughed.  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my chapters are so fragmentary and not finished yet and ahhhh  
> you'll get them eventually  
> still not sure what the post-recovery arc will be  
> but we'll get there!
> 
> Also if you haven't checked them out yet, under my 'series' there are a couple of short one-shots from Sloan's perspective. Not necessary to read the main story, they just give a bit of extra wossname.


	60. Bandages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock tries to help. Sort of. In his way.

It was mid-afternoon before his leg really started to bother him.  
  
Despite fucking everything Charon still had some semblance of pride, and he didn’t want to limp or stumble, but it was difficult to keep the grimace from his face. Hancock was ranging ahead, but Sloan was at his side, and he fell back a step so that she wouldn’t see if it became too much.  
  
“There’s an old house up ahead,” Sloan said eventually.  
  
She had only given him the briefest of glances, but she had noticed. Of course she had. He didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry.  
  
“It’s boarded up but we can break in. We’ll stop there.”  
  
He shook his head. “I do not need to stop.”  
  
“We’re stopping anyway. You’re in pain, John only got an hour’s sleep last night and I still have a rad-away headache. We could stand the extra rest. We’ll be sitting ducks if we drag ourselves along much further.”  
  
She had a point, and Charon gave her a reluctant nod.  
  
She eyed him up as they walked, and he tried to straighten his back a little, to hide the pain he felt. He was good at hiding pain; he had had a lot of practice. She was perceptive, though, and she knew him well. He caught the line between her eyes as she looked back towards the horizon.  
  
“We’ll split the watches tonight,” she said.  
  
“No.”  
  
“You need to heal. You —”  
  
He reached out to grab her by the shoulder and turned her towards him, bending a little to look into her eyes.  
  
“I am not going to sleep,” he told her. “It is not safe out here. I will not sleep. There is no point in splitting watches if I will get no rest.”  
  
She looked _very_ unhappy about this.  
  
“You slept in the raiders’ nest,” she pointed out, and he grimaced.  
  
“I’d lost too much blood and I had med-X in my head. I was dizzy, I was tired. I am not tired tonight. I slept yesterday, mistress. Understand me? Please.”  
  
“Still…”  
  
“Mistress. Please. I do not want sleep.”  
  
She sighed. “All right, you win.”  
  
He didn’t know what he would have done if she had ordered him. Begged, most likely. In Bethany’s house, under the influence of drugs and radiation, he had slept deeply, dreamlessly. Without either he did not trust that he wouldn’t wake up screaming. He didn’t want to do that. Not out here.   
  
“Thank you,” he said, and cupped her cheek, briefly, with one hand.  
  
“I’m not sure this is a favour,” she told him, turning away. “You would have walked until you’d fallen over if I let you.”  
  
“Weakness must be hidden,” he repeated quietly.  
  
“Not from _me,_ Charon. And you know that.” Her brows were pinched together in irritation, though whether it was _him_ she was annoyed with, he couldn’t work out. “Seriously. You don’t have to hide anything from me. I’m not going to punish you. You’re allowed to be weak. You’re allowed to hurt. You’re allowed to _rest_.”  
  
“Don’t make me sleep. Please.”  
  
There must have been something in his voice, because she looked at him sharply.  
  
“I’m not going to make you do anything, Charon,” she said at last. “You don’t need to worry about that. You make all your choices, okay?”  
  
“I know that, smoothskin,” he rasped.  
  
“I hope so.”  
  
It took the best part of an hour to reach the house, and by the time it came into view Charon had given up trying to hide his limp. Each step was more agonising than the one before, and he was annoyed with himself for how stubborn he had been earlier.  
  
The house was an old two-story, standing forlorn along the side of the road. There was a large shed out the back, and the rusted shell of a pick-up. Charon stared up at it with more trepidation than relief. The boarded-up buildings usually stayed that way for a reason. If this place was full of ferals… They’d had an easy time of it so far and it didn’t feel right. It was too easy.  
  
He readied his shotgun, hoping he wouldn’t flinch if he had to pull the trigger.  
  
Hancock pulled the boards down from the back door, and Sloan waited behind him with her own shotgun at the ready. The door opened soundlessly, and Sloan whistled, to draw out anything that might be lurking within. When nothing threw itself through the door, they slipped inside.  
  
Someone had lived here, not too long ago. Perhaps they had meant to return. There was a cooking fire in the kitchen, and in the sitting room they had set up a shrine of some kind, with a flaking painted image and a number of candles that had melted into a mass of wax. Sloan stopped before it, a frown curving her lips.  
  
“ _A million candles burning for the help that never came…_ ” She tipped the painting face-down, and sniffed. “Not a bad place to spend the night,” she said. “Good view from the top floor if we pull down a couple of boards, and no one will know we’re here if we keep the light downstairs.”  
  
Hancock slipped past her, checking rooms and darting up the stairs to make sure the place was safe. Sloan, meanwhile, seemed determined to make herself at home regardless. She flopped down onto the couch in the living room, and gestured to Charon.  
  
“If you sit down, I’ll change your dressings,” she said.  
  
He shook his head, and eased himself down onto the couch beside her, grimacing as the weight left his leg and it started to throb.  
  
“The dressings are fine.”  
  
“Dressings get changed once a day. _At least_. That’s good wound care.”  
  
“You said I make all my own choices,” he said. He was starting to feel a little woozy, and hoped it wasn’t some sort of med-X withdrawal. What did it matter if they changed the dressings? He didn’t want her touching them. He hurt.  
  
“Your choice, in this case, is between letting me change your bandages or dying of infection.”  
  
“I don’t — I don’t feel…” He put a hand to his head, blinking to clear his vision, and he heard Sloan curse to herself.  
  
“…had you walking all day on a busted leg,” she was muttering, hunting through her pack. She pulled out a can of dirty water and poked a hole in the top with a pen knife. “Here,” she said, knocking it against his hand. “God knows I should have been paying more attention to whether you’d had enough water…”  
  
“Why should you?” he asked, taking the can from her. “ _I_ should have.” The water was stale and the radiation weak, but he still felt a little better once he’d taken a few mouthfuls.  
  
“Doubt they gave you much water in that cell, and you’ve probably been leaking fluid out the gashes in your leg all goddamn day.” She knelt by his feet, pulling at the laces of his boot. “Swollen all to hell. We should have stayed at Bethany’s a little longer.”  
  
“I did not want to stay,” he reminded her.  
  
She yanked off his boot, and the blood rushing into his swollen foot had him biting back a cry of pain. She pushed up his torn trouser leg, mumbling something to herself as she looked over the bandages wrapped around his calf. Charon leant forward to get a better look, and grimaced. Blood and fluid had seeped through the bandage, the stains crusting at the edges.  
  
He heard Hancock make a sound, disgust or something like it, and looked up to see him hovering at the base of the stairs.  
  
“You been walking on that all day?” Hancock asked him. “Damn. Shoulda asked us to stop.” Charon opened his mouth to reply, and he cut him off. “I’m fuckin’ serious. Next time, you ask us to stop.”  
  
“I did not _want_ to stop,” Charon said, and clenched his jaw. “We are only stopped now because Sloan _insisted_.”  
  
“Fuckin’ suicidal,” Hancock muttered to himself, and slid through the room towards the back door. “I’m gonna get some wood. Looks like it’ll be a cold night.”  
  
“Why is he angry?” Charon asked Sloan after the door had shut behind him.  
  
“He’s angry at the people in the bunker,” she said, hunting through her pack. “And he’s angry that you think — I mean, he’s angry at all the other people who ever made you feel like you couldn’t ask to stop.”  
  
“But why?”  
  
“Because — Jesus. That’s not how life should be, Charon. Because when people feel pain they shouldn’t have to keep walking and pretend they don’t.”  
  
“He is idealistic. The world is not fair.”  
  
“He knows that,” she said, pulling off her gloves and dropping them on top of her pack. “He just thinks… I don’t know. That we can do something to make it just that bit fairer. And there are too many people who choose to do the opposite.”  
  
She pulled out a leather case, and laid it out on the floor. Tools. A surgeon’s tools. She set a roll of bandages down beside it, and looked up at him, a question on her face.  
  
“Fine,” he grumbled.  
  
“You know it needs to be changed,” she said, snipping the ties on his bandage and unwinding it from around his calf. “I don’t know why you’re making a big thing about it.”  
  
“It hurts,” he said, feeling like a petulant child.  
  
“I know.”  
  
She set the soiled bandages aside, and poured some of his water into an army mug. She dipped in a swatch of cloth, ringing it out and then gently wiping it along his stitches.  
  
Charon bit the inside of his cheek, and tried not to move. He really _had_ been stupid. The radiation at the doctor’s hill had done a lot of good and he’d all but undone it, pushing himself like that for so long.  
  
“At least it looks like the infection’s gone,” Sloan said, huffing a soft sigh. She rinsed out the cloth, and resumed her ministrations. “Not much redness or pus, which is good. Lots of swelling, though, and you’ve popped a few of your stitches. We’ll take it easy tomorrow. Leave late.”  
  
He didn’t want that, but he set his jaw, and nodded.  
  
She glanced up at him, and gave him a tired smile.  
  
“This isn’t your fault, Charon. It’s not a bad thing to take a little extra time getting home.”  
  
“I would rather be home faster,” he said, and then hissed as she rubbed a cleansing antiseptic wipe over his stitches.  
  
“Stings, I know,” she said. “I don’t like taking chances. Antibiotics are so hard to come by. I mean, god knows, you probably need a tetanus shot or something but I wouldn’t even know — we could go check out that hospital over near the Slog —”  
  
Charon leant forward, and caught her wrist.  
  
“Don’t worry about that, smoothskin. I will be fine. I just want to go home.”  
  
“I don’t even know if ghouls can _get_ tetanus,” she mumbled, dropping the swab and taking his hand in both of hers. She sat for a moment, sorrowfully examining his hand, and then her face crumpled.  
  
“Oh — no, smoothskin, don’t—”  
  
The door swung open, and Hancock dropped a bundle of firewood by the wall. His eyes settled on Sloan, still half a breath from bursting into tears.  
  
“I-I’m sorry,” Charon said, and swallowed. “I didn’t mean to, she just…”  
  
Hancock gave him a look, and then chuckled.  
  
“It ain’t your fault. She’s been doin’ that.”  
  
“…Why?”  
  
“ _I_ unno. Stress, some shit like that.” He dropped down onto the couch next to him, and nudged Sloan’s knee with his toe. “You want somethin’ to take the edge off?”  
  
She shook her head, and made a face. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m — I’m good. Maybe later?”  
  
“Sure. Just let me know.” He jerked a thumb in Charon’s direction. “How’s his leg?”  
  
“Could be worse. No infection.” She picked up the roll of fresh bandages, and shot Charon a wan smile as she started to wind it around his calf.  
  
“What did I say?” he murmured.  
  
“Nothing. It’s… It’s like…” Her eyes wandered over the ceiling, and back to his leg. “It’s like when you’re fighting, and you’re injured but you don’t notice it until the fight is over. Because before, there’s too much to focus on, too much to do. But afterward, there’s… quiet. That’s when it hits you. Maybe you felt it before, maybe some part of you knew, but it’s only when the battle stops that you have time to deal with the pain.” She ripped the end of the bandage in two, and tied it around his leg. “Imperfect metaphor, but you get it. Now, how’s your arm? Bandages still clean?”  
  
He let her inspect his other bandages. His stitches had held, and the wounds looked good, but she still insisted in cleaning them and changing his dressings. She perched behind him on the back of the couch, one leg danging over his good shoulder, and Charon twitched as she dabbed the damn antiseptic wipes across the yao-guai bites.  
  
“This is not funny,” he growled at Hancock.  
  
He cackled at him. “Look at you squirm!”  
  
“It _stings._ ”  
  
“You walk on a busted leg all day and then you complain about a little sting?”  
  
“I wasn’t complaining,” Charon said, and scowled. “And I am not squirming.”  
  
“You’re squirming.” He grinned.  
  
Sloan busied herself replacing his bandages, and when she had them all tied to her satisfaction she dropped a kiss onto the top of his head.  
  
“All done,” she said, climbing down from her perch.  
  
“Thank you,” he said a little testily.  
  
“Sulk all you want, you know it needed to be done.”  
  
Charon watched her as she crouched down at the hearth to light the fire. He was becoming used to her little gestures of affection, but he was certainly not used to an audience. It made him uneasy, uncomfortable, and yet there was something freeing in the fact that she had kissed him and Hancock had not even shown surprise.  
  
As the wood caught, she held her hands out in front of the flames.  
  
“This is nice,” she said with a soft sigh. “A fire in a proper fireplace. Like the old days.”  
  
Hancock watched her warming her hands, and then he looked at Charon, and nudged him with his elbow.  
  
“When’d you turn up again?” Hancock asked him.  
  
“…What?”  
  
He nodded in Sloan’s direction. “When’d she find you?”  
  
 Charon hesitated, rubbing his palms together as he watched the flames grow.  
  
“Spring.” He hadn’t known the date; not even the month. Spring, because the mutfruit was in bloom and the days were getting longer.  
  
“April the twelfth,” she told them both.  
  
“You remember that?” he asked her, raising hairless brows. She smirked.  
  
“’Course I remember.” She turned to sit with her back to the fire, and tapped the little computer on her wrist. “My pip-boy has a calendar. If anything big happens, I add something. That was the day I acquired a _person,_ so it kind of stood out.” She clicked through her pip-boy, looking over the data she had stored. “Kept a bit of a diary when I first got out of the vault. Helped me get my head back together.”  
  
Hancock straightened. “Hey, did you — you got our —”  
  
“Yes, I know all our anniversaries,” she told Hancock with a grin. “And don’t worry, I don’t expect you to remember them.”  
  
He fell back against the couch with an exaggerated sigh.  
  
“Thank Christ.”  
  
“Honestly I’d be surprised if you could have named the dates _at the time,_ let alone remember them a year later.”  
  
“Anniversaries?” Charon asked her. “More than one?”  
  
She turned her grin on him. “Oh, yes. You and I, for example. There was the day we met, the Slog, the day after the raiders nearly killed you, and then —”  
  
“All right,” he said hastily. Hancock was snickering beside him, and he turned his face away, grateful not for the first time that ghouls couldn’t blush.  
  
“Why’d you ask?” he heard Sloan ask Hancock.  
  
“I was just thinkin’ that you get cold in winter. And you’re shit at mentioning it when you are. Wondered whether he knew that, or not.” He nudged up the brim of his hat, and looked up at Charon. “You should look out for that, make sure her fingers don’t fall off.”  
  
“That is good to know,” Charon said slowly, looking back over at Sloan, crouched in front of the fire. “Thank you. I will watch her, for that.”  
  
She made an exasperated sound. “You don’t need to _watch_ me. I’m fine. Anyway, it doesn’t get as cold as it used to before the war.”  
  
“You had better heating back then,” Hancock reminded her. “Better’n barrels with fires in ‘em, or camp sites.”  
  
“You always keep me warm,” she said with a wide, scandalous sort of smile.  
  
Hancock looked for a moment like he might scold her, but then he broke into a grin.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Fine. Freeze, see if I care. You an’ your icy hands.”  
  
“Never heard you complaining about my icy hands before,” she said evenly.  
  
He chuckled. “Not for long, anyway.”  
  
Charon watched the flames flicker behind her, throwing shadow across her face, and chewed on the inside of his cheek.  
  
“She really does not mention it when she gets cold?” he murmured to Hancock after a moment or two.  
  
“Yeah. Well, she might this year. Last year was different. She was distracted a lot. The shit with her kid.”  
  
“…Ah.”  
  
“Pfft. It’s not fair, you guys ganging up on me just because I’m human and I get cold in winter.”  
  
Charon sat back, and swallowed.  
  
“I wasn’t… I didn’t mean…”  
  
She giggled, and shot him a grin. “I’m _teasing_ you, you big idiot.” She got to her feet, dusting off her hands. “I’m going outside to see if Dogmeat’s hanging around. Gotta answer a call of nature anyway.” She grabbed her rifle, resting the barrel on one shoulder. “If I see anything worth eating, I’ll bring it back with me.”  
  
She made for the door, and Charon staggered to his feet.  
  
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she told him, motioning him back towards the couch. “There is absolutely _no_ reason for you to ruin your nice new bandages. I will be _fine._ Please.”  
  
He didn’t want her going out there by herself. The sun hadn’t yet set and she had her rifle, but it felt wrong, he didn’t want her going out there without him.  
  
“Mistress —”  
  
“Charon, please. Your leg needs rest, and I don’t want to _make_ you. I’m asking. Please.”  
  
“Sit your ass down, Ferryman.” Hancock reached up to tug on his shirt.  
  
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and disappeared through the door.  
  
It banged shut behind her, and Charon dropped back onto the couch with a sigh. He ran his hand back through his hair, and shot a look at Hancock, who was pulling chems out of a coat pocket and laying them out on the cushion between them.  
  
“You cannot blame me,” he said.  
  
“For what?” He tossed him a jar. “Buffout. Keep ‘em. Just in case.”  
  
“For wanting to follow her.”  
  
“No. But you’ll just limp around with a target on your head. She’s safer without you.”  
  
Charon winced, but he couldn’t deny it. He sighed to himself, and picked up the jar, turning it over in his hands. The pills rattled against the plastic.  
  
“I left her,” he said eventually. “I went down to the stream to wash my shirt, and I left her.”  
  
“Yeah. Listen, you know she used to travel by herself, right?”  
  
“I realise she is capable,” Charon said, “and if she had just been asleep — the dog was with her, she had her guns. I know she would have been fine. But she was _sick_. Still groggy from the med-X. She was sick and she was vulnerable and I _left_ her. I — Those men were following us for days. _Days_. And _I did not notice_. I was too — too —” He broke off with a growl of frustration. “The world had changed and I stopped paying attention to anything but her. If it hadn’t been her money they wanted we might both be dead.”  
  
“Look, if you wanna beat yourself up over it, go ahead. But I ain’t gonna do it for ya.”  
  
“If _you_ left her in that position, I would be angry,” he told him bluntly.  
  
He shook his head, and smirked. “You really want me to kick your ass over this?”  
  
“Yes. Please.”  
  
“Fine.” He lit a cigarette, and blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. Then he fixed Charon with a steely look, and stabbed a finger towards him. “You fucked up,” he said. “You weren’t watching, you weren’t aware, you weren’t keeping her safe. That’s your _job._ What the fuck does she keep you around for if you ain’t watching her back?”  
  
Charon closed his eyes, but said nothing. There was a twisted sort of comfort in that accusation. That someone else saw where he had failed.  
  
“Hey, I _asked_ you a _question_.”  
  
Charon glanced at him in surprise. “I th-thought it was rhetorical,” he said, stumbling over his words.  
  
“No. I wanna know. Why are you _here?_ What does she keep you around for?"  
  
He shook his head, and rubbed his palms together. “Honestly I have never understood why she keeps me around. I believe she considers it a responsibility.”  
  
Hancock was silent, and when he looked back over at him he was watching him with an expression he couldn’t read.  
  
“She does,” he said at last. “It is. Like havin’ a kid is a responsibility, or a dangerous weapon. Like bein’ in charge of a gang.”  
  
“Like Goodneighbor.”  
  
“Well, whatever. So Sunshine takes her eye off this person she’s responsible for, that she _cares about,_ you asshole, and poof.” He flicked his fingers. “He’s gone.”  
  
Charon closed his eyes. “She was upset.”  
  
“You fucking _think?_ ”  
  
“You’re more angry about that than about my failing her.”  
  
“This is the shit you don’t get. I ain’t angry at you.”  
  
“But I —”  
  
“You fucked up, sure. But you’re here, right? So’s she, so am I. Magically, it all worked out sorta okay.” He shrugged. “So now what?”  
  
“I don’t…”  
  
“No one died what didn’t deserve it. You’re the only one who got hurt.” He made a frustrated gesture. “ _Yeah,_ you got her all upset and you dragged the both of us out there to rescue your sorry ass, but so what? We do that shit all the time, for people we ain’t never met before. It ain’t the end of the world, and it weren’t your fault. So what? You gonna make it up to us? What happens now, Ferryman?”  
  
“I… I’m sorry.” He swallowed.  
  
“No, don’t fucking —” He exhaled sharply. “Look, I know you ain’t gonna fuck up the same way twice. You don’t got to apologise to me. Or to her. You feel me?”  
  
Charon’s forehead furrowed. “And… that’s _it?_ That is your ass-kicking? You are not very good at this.”  
  
“Yeah, well I ain’t had a lot of practise. People usually go out of their way to avoid pissing me off. And I ain’t big on rules. A friendly reminder usually fixes the problem. By the time we get to where something’s gotta be done I usually just skip to the killing part.”  
  
“That explains a lot,” he said dryly. “But how can this… I _left her_. You know what she is like when she… When…”  
  
“When her period fucks her up?” A grin flashed across Hancock’s face. “I don’t, actually,” he said, and flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette.  
  
“…What? But… you…”  
  
“She’s only really had a bad month when she’s been on the road with you.” He waved a hand. “Couple of times we had to cut the sex short because, I dunno, something in her insides weren’t taking it well, and one morning she took a med-X when she got up. That’s it.”  
  
“I had not realised that,” he said. “I assumed…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“…I don’t know. That you would know what to do.”  
  
Hancock chuckled. “What am I, the encyclopaedia of Sloan?”  
  
“Well…”  
  
“What about me?”  
  
She stepped through the door, Dogmeat slinking into the house behind her.  
  
“Nothing,” Hancock said, beckoning to her. “Ferryman wanted to know what to do when you get all… when your insides stab you.”  
  
“Oh.” She set her rifle down, leaning it against the wall, and went to perch beside him on the arm of the couch. “I guess… rub my back when I ask, and listen to me whine. And other than that… just leave me alone until it passes.” She shrugged. “It’s usually not too bad. I’m pretty lucky. I knew someone who had it really bad, she ended up in the ER after bleeding for a straight month.”  
  
Hancock frowned. “I ain’t too happy with this whole ‘leave you alone’ shit.”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s because you haven’t heard me whine,” she said with a smile. “Now… I caught fuck-all for dinner, so how’s fried Cram sound? I was thinking the kitchen might have a frying pan.”  
  
Charon leant back on the couch and watched her as she prepared their dinner. A familiar chore, one he’d watched her perform countless times, sometimes in houses like this, sometimes with Hancock stretched out nearby. The familiarity was almost comforting. Reassuring. But it needed something…  
  
“Guns,” he blurted out.  
  
She glanced at him over her shoulder, and he cleared his throat.  
  
“I… I can clean your guns.”  
  
She smiled. “You think I’ve let them get all gross and dirty?”  
  
“Haven’t you?”  
  
She laughed. “Fine, maybe I have. I’ll get them.”  
  
She fetched them, and some cleaning cloths, humming to herself as she laid them out on the old wood floor.  
  
Charon settled himself beside her, near the fire, and let himself fall into the soothing, meditative task of cleaning the guns.  
  


 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... We have quite a few chapters of the healing arc up ahead. We're talking more than ten. There's a little other chapter or two in there too that sort of change the tone a bit but are contributing towards the same basic wossname. Aaaanyway, what I'm saying is, we're kind of (finally!) coming to the natural end here. I was thinking I might use the opportunity to wrap things up.
> 
> WAIT DON'T PANIC! See, I still kind of want to break Charon's contract, and there will be a loose end or two when this is done that will need to be wrapped up. So I was thinking it would be more appropriate to do that in a sequel than to do it here. I also think it would be neat one day to write The Gang Goes to DC for two reasons and two reasons alone: Gob should be free, and it would be deeply funny to introduce Sloan to centaurs. Maybe they'll just go in the one-shot collection. 
> 
> Anyway, that's the plan, we'll see how it goes.


	61. Crying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darkness steals closer, waiting to pounce.

  
Sloan was curled up on the couch next to him, her head in his lap.    
  
He had almost asked her to move, at first. The tending his wounds, he could cope with that, and even the kiss she had pressed to the top of his head had been brief and platonic. This, though… this was _intimate,_ and it had taken far too long for it to sink in that Hancock really did not care.   
  
It was if he didn’t even notice it. When Sloan, yawning, had laid down with her back to the fire and Charon’s thigh for a pillow, Hancock pulled off her boots and tickled the soles of her feet, until she’d squirmed, giggling, and told him off for keeping her awake. Then he’d leant back against the arm of the couch, his eyes closed, a mentat dissolving under his tongue. Unconcerned. Like it was nothing.  
  
Charon let his eyes wander over the flicker of firelight on the floor. Sloan’s pack was lying by the hearth, her boots beside the couch. Dogmeat was sprawled out in front of the fire, his paws twitching as he dreamt whatever dreams dogs dream.  
  
Charon stroked his hand through Sloan’s hair, combing out the tangles. He had touched her hair so many times, and yet it still made his breath catch in his throat. So soft. If he closed his eyes, he could have been back in the Rexford, months ago. Her head in his lap, his hand in her hair… So much had happened since then, and yet this, this quiet intimacy… it was the same. The same soft solace, the same trust.   
  
He hadn’t had the first inclination of loving her, then. It had taken so long to admit to himself. When had it started? Nahant? Where she had stretched out beside him on a couch just like this, and told him she didn’t want to be the reason he went feral? Or was it the night in that raiders’ nest, when she’d sung him that little song, and watched over him while he slept?   
  
How did people know when love started? Perhaps it _had_ been that night at the Rexford, sharing her bed in such complete innocence as his nightmare dissipated into the shadows.   
  
Sloan started to hum something to herself, something soft and slow.  
  
“Whatcha singing, Sunshine?” Hancock asked her.  
  
“ _It’s all over,_ ” she breathed, a crackle in her voice. “ _It’s all over… but the crying…_ ”  
  
“No crying,” Charon said, and brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “No crying, smoothskin.”  
  
“Ah, leave her. She needs her sleep.”  
  
“So do you,” Charon pointed out. He had made it through the day without complaint, but the man must have been tired, no matter how many hits of jet he’d gone through.  
  
Hancock cracked open one eye to look at him a moment, and then closed it again.  
  
“And you’re a freak.” He shifted his shoulder-blades against the arm of the couch. “This something they beat into you back when all this started? No sleep?”  
  
“Possibly.”  
  
“Imagine the kind of asshole who won’t let a guy sleep. Fucked up.”  
  
Charon said nothing. He looked down at Sloan instead, his hand on her back. She shifted, her hand fisting in his shirt, and sighed. A few minutes later she fell into that slow rhythm of breathing that meant she was dead to the world.  
  
She looked so damn tired, even asleep.   
  
“How is she?” he asked Hancock quietly. “She looks… worn.”  
  
“She _is_ worn. She’ll be all right. She cried a lot, after we left you at Bethany’s, but I think it was mostly stress. Plus she weren’t feeling well.”  
  
“She cried? Why?”  
  
“…You know what you looked like when we found you, right?”  
  
Charon swallowed, and nodded.  
  
“She’s pretty good at, like… She’ll put all that shit to the side until she’s done what she’s got to do, and then she’ll pick it back up again. Like she said earlier.”  
  
“Still… I hate it when she cries over me. It shouldn’t happen. I… I am sorry it upset her.”  
  
“Ain’t your fault.”  
  
Charon looked into the fire, and took a breath.  
  
“This really… does not bother you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“She has her head in my lap,” he said. “She… cares… about _me._ Why doesn’t that bother you?”  
  
Hancock shrugged. “She loves _me,_ and that don’t bother you.”  
  
“No.” He hesitated. “It used to. But not for the same reasons.”  
  
Hancock opened his eyes, and flashed him a grin. “Yeah. I saw it, bothering you. Used to be more handsy than usual just to get to ya, till she caught on and made me stop.”  
  
Charon snorted a laugh. “Asshole.”  
  
“That’s me.”  
  
“I don’t know why it bothered me so much,” he admitted.   
  
“Yeah, ya do.” He waved a hand, closing his eyes again. “You been around too many people who talked shit about ghouls. That’s why.”  
  
“You don’t understand how different this place is,” Charon told him. “How different _you_ are. Not just Goodneighbor. Diamond City may have thrown out their ghouls but what is surprising is that they ever let them in at all.” He traced his thumb along the curve of Sloan’s throat, and she shifted in his lap. “There are ghouls who hate humans not because they are bigots but because humans remind them of what they are. They distrust them.”  
  
“Not like they don’t got a reason.”  
  
“No,” Charon agreed. “But even humans like her, who want to help… They assume humans will hate them because that is how they feel about themselves. Why wouldn’t they hate us? We are monsters. Walking corpses.”   
  
“We are _not_ fucking _monsters_.”  
  
“You grew up around ghouls, yes?”  
  
“…Yeah. So?”  
  
“Ghouls were not strange to you, not… frightening. You were used to us, by the time you became one yourself. When the bombs fell no one knew what a ghoul was. And when we are ostracised, no one will take the time to find out.  Most ghouls live apart from humans, through force or by choice. Children don’t grow up with ghouls around, so we remain monsters. Strange, disturbing. And then you become one.” He paused, allowing a little of that ancient memory to stir in his mind. “I don’t think I knew much about ghouls, before I turned. I don’t remember… just… the horror. Becoming something that was… dead. Rotting.” He grimaced. “They call us _post-humans_ because we are corpses that forgot to die. But you knew what ghouls were. They were always _people_ to you. People you wanted to help. You feel differently, about this. Outside of the Commonwealth, a human and a ghoul together…” He shook his head. “It was never the humans. They just remind us of what we used to be. The hatred is our own. But Sloan… she is perfect. Watching you with her… it felt… wrong.”  
  
Hancock made a grumbling noise at the back of his throat.  
  
“I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s bullshit no matter who it comes from,” Hancock said, “ghouls or humans. All people are people. Anyway, you got over it.”  
  
“Yes. You fit, you and her. It took me a long time to see it, but that’s why it doesn’t bother me, any more. And because you were here first. If I asked her to choose, she wouldn’t choose me.”  
  
“I weren’t here first neither. She’s still in love with her dead husband. Figure she always will be. Kinda prefer it that way, honestly. Less pressure.” He slouched down further against the arm of the couch, and let out a sigh. “Love ain’t a finite resource, Ferryman. Lovin’ you don’t mean she loves me any less. That ain’t how it works.”  
  
 “You expect me to know how it works?” He smirked to himself. “Understand: few employers will give you the time to… to _form relationships_ with people. If I wanted a fuck I’d have to steal the time when out on a job for my employer. Dangerous. People stayed away from me.”  
  
“You don’t got to worry about that no more.”  
  
“And it is hard to get used to,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing; I am making this up as I go.” He looked over at Hancock. “You are better at this sort of thing than me.”  
  
“Better at the flirtin’, maybe. This ain’t the same thing. I never been good at… rules. Expectations. It’s easy with her, but only ‘cause we _make_ it easy. Don’t mean I know what’s going to happen around the next corner. I actually kinda like that part. Keeps it fun. Prob’ly still going to fuck it up eventually, but I’m gonna… I’m gonna try.”  
  
“Didn’t you love anyone, before her?”  
  
There was a moment of suspended silence. Hancock raised his head. He looked at him for a moment, solemn, his dark eyes reflecting the firelight. Then he lowered his head back onto the arm of the couch, and closed his eyes.  
  
“Yeah. Penelope. Long time ago.”  
  
“ _Penelope._ ”  
  
“Don’t fucking laugh,” he snarled.  
  
Charon bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Another night he might have laughed no matter what threat Hancock had made. Not tonight. Not after he’d come to help drag him out of hell.  
  
“How did it end?” he asked him.  
  
Hancock shifted against the arm of the couch, frowning.  
  
“We used to sneak out to Goodneighbor, score some chems. This was… way back. Before the ghouls, y’know. I’d been doing it a couple years, sneakin’ out, and she wanted to come with, so I started letting her tag along. Not every time, just… We used to… ah, it ain’t important.” He shook his head, and Charon saw his throat move as he swallowed. “That day I’d… I don’t even remember. Something had happened and I didn’t want to go home. Figured I’d hang out there a while, get high. She wanted to leave but I don’t know why, I weren’t really paying that much attention. Too stoned. She said she was heading back to Diamond City, and I said I’d see her later. She never made it home.”  
  
Charon felt a chill.  
  
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s a dangerous world.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Tried to organise a search party but no one really cared. Not even her parents. Never found out what happened to her.”   
  
“That’s… wrong. No one came to help you look for her?”   
  
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” He turned his head toward the back of the couch, his face hidden in a fall of shadow. “After her, I dunno. Never really wanted to settle down. You trust someone, you — I mean there were people I liked, people I messed around with. Still are. But y’know… they come, they go. She stuck around. Or I did.”  
  
Charon looked down at her solemnly, and brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “I was trying to work out… when it started. Caring.”  
  
“Don’t think it works like that. Anyway, I ain’t an expert. Ask her.”  
  
“I have done,” he said dryly. “She was not helpful. She said she _decided_ to love me, which is _nonsense,_ and that you hit her like a runaway train.”  
  
Hancock snorted a laugh. “Christ. I’m a terrible person.”  
  
“Yes.” He smirked. “I believe she likes that about you.”   
  
Hancock yawned, his jaw cracking, and Charon remembered how tired he must be.  
  
“I will leave you to sleep,” he said solemnly.  
  
“Ah, you don’t got to go nowhere,” Hancock drawled.   
  
“Someone needs to keep watch.”  
  
“Don’t got to be you, though.”  
  
A muscle jumped in his cheek, and he looked away.   
  
“You don’t trust me to do this.”  
  
There was a pause, and he looked back over in time to see Hancock’s face twist in confusion.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You — I fucked up. Now you don’t think I can —”  
  
“Fucking Christ, ‘course I don’t — Go stand watch then, if you want. I don’t fucking care. Just thought you could stand some time off.”  
  
“I don’t know what to do with _time off._ It does not mean anything to me.” Hancock’s frown deepened, and Charon sighed. “You are tired. You need sleep, and so does she. I don’t. I can’t pull the trigger without flinching and I can barely walk but I can fucking stand watch. Just let me do what I can do.”  
  
Hancock exhaled, and shook his head.   
  
“If that’s what you want, brother,” he said in a tired voice.   
  
Getting Sloan off his lap without waking her stymied Charon at first, until he realised quite how deeply she was sleeping. In the end he scooped her into his arms as he stood, his weight on his good leg, and laid her down beside Hancock. He saw the man’s mouth twitch into a smile as the woman shifted closer to him in her sleep, and then he turned and climbed the stairs.  
  
The watch was boring, and lonely. He supposed that was better than exciting and deadly, but he couldn’t shake a feeling of melancholy, all the same. He should be joyful. He should be filled with the thrill of surviving something that could have killed him. This wasn’t like the fevered anxiety of escaping the scientist’s labs, or the heady rush of adrenaline after a close fight. It wasn’t even like the night in the raider’s nest, feeling confused and dizzy and deeply unsure. Instead he felt… cold. Like there was something he couldn’t reach, couldn’t close his mind around.   
  
Everything was frustrating. Walking, moving, taking a breath — everything seemed to pull at his stitches. He would be still, and forget, and then he would move again and feel the sharp sting as his wounds protested. Fucking stimpaks were too useful. He’d forgotten how much he hated the process of healing, how damn long it seemed to take.   
  
He moved around the room, slow, one hand on the wall to keep the weight off his bad leg. The sky had cleared, and the stars were sparkling bright in the dark sky. The moon would be rising soon, and it would be a little easier to see if there was anything or anyone out there in the darkness.   
  
The darkness. Downstairs at least there was the firelight, and up here there were the stars, but for a few tense moments as he pulled the boards from the windows he felt the shadows pressing in around him and had nearly panicked. He dreaded hearing the voice again. Light kept him grounded, kept him rooted to the here-and-now.   
  
The night was cool and quiet. He saw the shadow of a wild dog outlined against the sky as it stood upon a boulder, and then it was gone. There was nothing else. No tension. If there were raiders and predators out there, they weren’t hunting tonight.   
  
A creak on the stairs made him look up, but the flare of adrenaline quickly faded. He knew the way that shape was moving. He didn’t have to see her face to recognise her.  
  
“You don’t have to stay up here,” she said in a hushed voice.   
  
“I know. I wanted to look out, to check the surroundings. Someone has to keep watch, and it is easier from up here.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“There is not much to see.”  
  
She crossed the floor to him and slid her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed against his chest. One hand clenched around the cloth of his shirt.  
  
“You’re warm,” she mumbled.  
  
“And you are cold,” he said, sliding his hand into her hair. “Mistress, you should be sleeping by the fire, not up here with me.”  
  
“I am where I want to be.”  
  
His chest clenched, and he wrapped his arms around her.  
  
“I will be here in the morning,” he said, fighting to keep the waver from his voice. “You need your sleep.”  
  
She said nothing, just tightened her arms around his waist, and after a moment he tugged gently on a lock of her hair.  
  
“You going to cry on me, smoothskin?” he asked her, his voice rough.  
  
She shook her head, but her shoulders were stiff, and after a moment she said, “I’m trying pretty hard not to.”  
  
He huffed a laugh, and bent his head close to hers.  
  
“I love you, woman,” he said. “You know that?”  
  
She tilted her head up. He couldn’t see her expression in the dark, but he heard the love in her voice, and it hurt.  
  
“I do know that, now that you mention it,” she said.  
  
He didn’t know how to respond, and after a moment she sighed, and pulled away. She went to the window to rest her hands on the windowsill, and looked up at the sky. The moon had risen; a half-moon, but still bright enough to throw an eerie light onto the world.   
  
She took a breath, and spoke.  
  
 “‘Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.’”  
  
“That is… is that a poem? Who wrote that?”  
  
She shrugged. “I can’t remember. The Old Astronomer, it was called. That’s the only part I know.”  
  
“It is beautiful.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He stepped up behind her, sliding an arm around her waist and looking up at the stars with her. God, he’d missed her. Missed this, this contact, this closeness. Doing something with her as small as looking at the stars.   
  
She leant back against him, and he closed his eyes for just a moment, enjoying the weight of her, the reassurance of her presence. But she was cold, and she was tired, and she didn’t need to stay here.  
  
“Go back downstairs, smoothskin,” he said to her, bending to kiss the top of her head. “Go and sit with Hancock by the fire. Please.”  
  
She brushed her fingers across the back of his hand, lifting her head to look up at him.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“I’m sure. Go on.” He let her go, and pushed her gently towards the stairs.  
  
She hovered, a dark shape in a dark room.  
  
“You know where I am,” she told him. “If you need me…”  
  
“I know. Go on.”  
  
She went, and when he was sure she must have settled back downstairs he turned and braced his arm against the wall.  
  
The pain in his leg was not relenting. If anything, it felt like it was getting worse. He hated trying to hide it around her, and hell, she probably saw anyway. She’d told him how she used to watch him flinch, back when she first took over his contract, and he hadn’t even been aware of doing so.  Why hide it? Why did he feel this… this need to protect himself from her? He knew, intellectually he knew that she would be nothing but comforting if he were to admit it. If he asked to stay here a day or two to recover she’d probably be more relieved than angry. But he hated the thought of it. He didn’t want to admit to her that he was hurting, and it bothered him that he couldn’t quite work out why. She wasn’t going to be angry. She wasn’t going to throw him away.   
  
But maybe she should. What use was he, in this state? It was his purpose to protect her, and knowing he couldn’t, that he wasn’t the strong fighter she needed him to be… He ground his teeth. Perhaps she should have left him where he was. Left him to rot in that cell, in the dark. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's all over but the crying" by the Ink Spots is a track played on Diamond City Radio. Rather encapsulates what Charon has yet to understand. "The Old Astronomer" is by Sarah Williams, and you can read it on Wikisource.


	62. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So close, and yet in some ways, so very far away.

His leg hurt.  
  
Dawn was creeping grey and solemn across the wasteland, and Charon stood at the upstairs window, his knuckles white as he leant on the windowsill. He was furious with himself.  
  
Injuries were always frustrating, but this… He wanted to be _home,_ wherever the fuck that was. Behind some solid walls, at least, whether they were Goodneighbor’s or Diamond City’s. And his fucking leg was going to slow them down.  
  
He should have slept. He was so _fucking_ stubborn — if he had slept his leg would have had some time to heal, but instead he had paced the fucking room for half the night and he was barely better off than he had been when they had stopped the day before. Sloan would want to stay until he was more fit to travel, and if he hid it and soldiered on Hancock would be angry when the facade inevitably cracked and they had to stop. And what if his leg failed him somewhere dangerous? If they were attacked or out of cover? He was a _liability._  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
He stiffened, and turned to see her standing at the top of the stairs, sleepy and rumpled.  
  
“Fine,” he spat.  
  
“Does your leg hurt?”  
  
He shifted his weight, and growled to himself. “Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “I hate it. I fucking — I just want to go home. Wherever the fuck _that_ is.”  
  
“I know. We’ll get there.”  
  
“I’m slowing us down.”  
  
“Well, it’s not as if we’re going to leave you behind,” she said with a smile. “We can stay here another day.”  
  
“I don’t _want_ to —” He cut himself off, and took a breath. “I want — I want to be — ”    
  
“Safe?”  
  
He curled his lip in a snarl. “ _Safe_. No place is safe. Diamond City is full of guards who want to kill me, Goodneighbor is one raider attack away from being a burnt hole in the ground, and the Slog doesn’t even have walls. _Nowhere is safe_.” He looked over his shoulder, out the window into the lightening dawn, and ground his teeth. “But being out here is worse,” he muttered. “I fucking _hate_ being injured. Being a _burden._ ”  
  
“Charon…” She ducked to the side, putting herself in his field of vision. “Charon. You are the reason we’re here. You aren’t a burden. All right? We came for _you_. It doesn’t matter how long it takes us —”  
  
“Of _course_ it _matters,_ ” he said. “Of course it matters! Every moment we’re out here — I will slow you down, and if we’re _attacked_ — I flinch every time I pull the fucking trigger. I can’t move fast enough to protect _myself,_ let alone you. You need to leave me here and go on ahead, you need to —”  
  
“Charon, stop.”  
  
The words caught in his throat, and he took a breath, his stitches pulling as his chest expanded. He stared at her, feeling suspended, waiting for the next order.  
  
It didn’t come. She was watching him, her eyebrows pinched together. Waiting. For what? She said stop, and he had stopped. What was he supposed to do? Why had she ordered him? She _never_ gave him an order without a good reason. She would have undone it by now if it had been a mistake.  
  
There had to be a reason. She’d told him to stop. What had he done wrong?  
  
He had… he’d… he’d been _yelling_. At her. Over shit she couldn’t fix. Asking her to _leave him behind_. Which was… which was, _god,_ it was stupid. Why had he said that? The only reason they were here was for his sake. He was being irrational.  
  
He took another breath, shaky this time. One of his hands was trembling, and he squeezed it into a fist.  
  
“All right?” she asked him carefully.  
  
He gave her a jerky nod.  
  
“Okay. At ease.”  
  
The order released him, and he exhaled a long, slow breath.  
  
“Thank you,” he rasped. “How — how did you know? To do that.” He grimaced. “I let it control me.”  
  
“You’re okay.” She stepped forward to take his hand, holding it between both of hers. “Nate used to do the same thing. Something small would niggle at him, and he’d go off on these rants, blow it all out of proportion. He’d burn the dinner and throw the pan across the room. Anger is easier, I think. Easier than fear. It’s like… like everything becomes black and white. He worked hard, got through the worst of it. But I never really worked out how to deal with him when he was like that.”  
  
“You dealt with me,” Charon told her.  
  
“Well, yeah.” She looked up at him, smirking. “With _you_ it’s easy. I just have to say ‘stop’, and hope you’ll re-centre yourself.”  
  
“Does it happen to you?”  
  
“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s easier, once you’re aware of what’s happening. Usually all I need is for someone to let me know I’m doing it.”  
  
“Like Hancock,” he said, realisation dawning. “In the bunker.”  
  
She smiled. “Yeah.”  
  
“But this — this didn’t happen to you. The — the bunker — this wasn’t something that happened to you. So why… It reminded you of something? Something bad?”  
  
“The bunker _was_ something bad, Charon. All by itself, it was something bad.” She sighed, and stepped closer, reaching up to rest a hand against his chest. “You’re right that it didn’t happen to me. It’s just sometimes… something happens, I see something… it reminds me that the world has changed. I’ll be walking along in a dream and then something happens and I open my eyes again, and see everything like I did when I climbed out of the vault. And it’s awful. Back by the stream… I was sleeping and when I woke up, someone I love was missing. You understand? That’s not the first time that’s happened to me.”  
  
“Your boy.”  
  
“Yeah. I was eighty years too late to find Shaun. I was too late before I even started looking.” She shook her head, and looked up, giving him a wry grin. “People just keep getting kidnapped around me, it’s starting to piss me off.”  
  
“Smoothskin…”  
  
 She ignored him. “And, hey… ask Hancock, if you need something. It can help.”  
  
“…What?”  
  
“With the — when you feel all agitated. I take a hit of calmex, if I need to. Chills me out, makes me zen. It helps me re-centre myself. I took it a few times on the way out here, when I got a bit… overwrought. Hancock has some, if you need it. You just have to ask. Okay?”  
  
He doubted he would, but it was reassuring all the same. The anger had seeped out of him, into the grey dawn, leaving something else, something cold and sharp and painful. He thought he might prefer the anger. He trailed his fingers up her arm to grasp her hand, next to his chest, and closed his eyes, tilting his head up toward the ceiling. Would calmex blunt that sharpness a little? He was almost tempted to ask for it. Part of him wanted to cry, and he wasn’t willing to do that. Not here. Not now. If he was going to cry it was going to be in her fortress in Diamond City, behind that heavy steel door. He was clinging to the image of that door. He could hold himself together until then.  
  
“I am pathetic,” he murmured.  
  
“Of course you’re not.”  
  
“I want to go home and I have no home.”  
  
“Your home is _with me,_ ” she said.  
  
“But I am _with_ you and I still feel as if I am not… where I should be. You know I have never had a home. This is the first time I have felt like there was a place I am supposed to be, and I’m not there.” He rubbed his hand along the curve of her tricep. “I was thinking of it yesterday, of _home,_ and I thought of that church in Nahant. Why there? There was nothing safe about that place. Just danger, fear.”  
  
“Maybe it’s like… Like when it rains. How you always feel more cosy and warm when there’s rain pattering on the roof. You know?” She smiled up at him. “So… it felt… safe, sort of, because we’d just escaped from something that wasn’t. We’d shut the door and we felt a little bit of security. Diamond City’s the same way… You have to get through the gauntlet of guards and people and then we shut the door and lock them out.”  
  
“I am a fool, then,” he murmured.  
  
“Maybe. But you’re my fool.”  
  
A smile tugged on the corner of his mouth.  
  
“A fool twice,” he said. “I was stubborn, yesterday. I should have slept, or tried, at least.”  
  
“Why didn’t you?”  
  
He looked up towards the ceiling again, a muscle jumping in his cheek.  
  
“I didn’t want — I have nightmares at the best of times, beauty, I didn’t — I was afraid.”  
  
She stirred, shifting her weight from one foot to another.  
  
“What should I… If you have a nightmare, should I wake you? How do I do that?”  
  
“I can’t hurt you,” he said, running his hand along her arm. “Even half-asleep, I won’t be able to attack you. You’ve done it before.”  
  
“That means I should tell Hancock not to do anything.”  
  
“That might be wise,” he admitted, “though I cannot think he would ever be in a position to wake me. I only sleep in cities, and he has his own bed.”  
  
“A girl can dream, can’t she?”  
  
“What?”  
  
She huffed a laugh, and shook her head. “Nothing. It’s not important.”  
  
She turned to lead him down the stairs, but he reached out and caught her arm.  
  
“Wait. Beauty. There’s something…” He hesitated, and swallowed. “You know that I care. Yes?”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Last night… I was thinking about when it started. Caring about you. You said that you decided, but there must have been a… a point where you noticed. A change… something.”  
  
“There were lots of points. Lots of little changes. It happens by degrees.”  
  
“But you l-love me. When did you realise?”  
  
She let her eyes wander around the room.  
  
“Do you remember,” she said, “when we were going south to get that tape of Valentine’s? We’d just wiped out those raiders to check I wasn’t all twitchy after the deathclaw.”  
  
“I remember.”  
  
“That night, late, something woke me. Not sure what… maybe it was a dream. But you know how it is, in the wasteland. If something wakes you…”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I looked around, and I saw you, and you said, ‘go back to sleep, smoothskin,’” she affected a rasp that made him smile, “and I just… I knew you’d look out for me. No matter what. I felt as safe as I ever did in Diamond City, as safe as before the war. I kept thinking… I mean, I always trusted you, I knew you’d protect me. That’s your job and you’re good at it. But it was different, somehow. There was something different about it. That’s when I realised.”  
  
He stepped forward, and bent to press his ragged lips against her forehead.  
  
“Thank you,” he said.  
  
“Does that… help?”  
  
“Yes.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I was just… I don’t know when it started. I think I denied it for a long time.”  
  
“What made you think of that?”  
  
“I… don’t know. I missed you when we were apart. You fell asleep on me last night, and… I don’t know.” He shrugged, and held out a hand in a gesture of confusion. “I am still not used to this. I am trying to understand it.”  
  
She laughed. “Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I don’t understand it either.” She reached for his hand, and tugged him towards the stairs. “Come on. Hancock’s waiting.”  
  
They made good time, in spite of Charon’s leg. Even so, their pace slowed a little in the afternoon. Charon was starting to limp again, and both Sloan and Hancock seemed lost in thought. If they noticed he was slowing them down, neither of them seemed to care.  
  
Eventually he caught the shorter ghoul looking at him, and grimaced.  
  
“I’m fine,” he said.  
  
“Did I say something?”  
  
“I could see you _thinking_ something.”  
  
He smirked. “I’m tryin’a figure out what your deal is.”  
  
“My _deal?_ ”  
  
“Yeah. The way you blame yourself for every goddamn thing.”  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Yeah, you do. Buncha guys ghoul-nap you, it’s _your_ fault. They beat the shit out of you, _that’s_ your fault.” He tapped a finger against his temple. “Something ain’t right in your head.”  
  
“Have you reached any conclusions?” Sloan asked him idly.  
  
“…Yeah. I got some ideas,” he said. He gave Charon a cagey look.  
  
“Well?” He sneered. “Illuminate me.”  
  
“All right. I figure if you think it’s your fault, at least you’re controlling something,” he said bluntly. “Otherwise everything’s just shit thrown at you. It makes you feel like — like —”  
  
“Like he has agency,” Sloan said.  
  
“…Yeah. Like shit happens because you make decisions, even if it ain’t shit you want.”  
  
Charon’s mouth twitched. “You don’t think this applies to you?”  
  
“Any shit thrown my way, I deserved,” he said. “Probably deserved a lot more.”  
  
“ _You_ think that. No one else seems to agree.” There was a heavy feeling, low in his chest, and he tried to ignore it.  
  
“Look, I made my own stupid fucking decisions. No one else told me to run. I did that all by myself. I don’t got anyone else to blame for the shit I’ve done.”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. He was annoyed to realise that the sour feeling in his gut was jealousy. Fucking jealousy — that, of all things, Hancock had been able to make his own mistakes. The freedom to do whatever he wanted, to try and fail and run, to have regrets that weren’t forced upon him by someone else but the result of his own choices. How long had it been since he had wished for something so fucking stupid?  
  
An image of the rugged wasteland north of the Slog flashed across Charon’s mind. A stone tumbling down the slope, kicked by an idle boot. An argument. And that moment, when he’d pushed himself to his feet and brushed his lips across Sloan’s. A choice, and one that could have been a mistake. _Was_ a mistake, really; it was only her reaction that made it seem, in retrospect, something precious. Precious, but still deeply embarrassing.  
  
_You make all your own choices,_ she’d told him yesterday. He wasn’t even sure he wanted that to be true. The choices he _did_ make — the big ones, the ones that weren’t just instinct or boredom or tactical decisions in a fight — never seemed to turn out well. Bad choices. In a way it had sometimes reassured him to know that he would never be able to ruin things on his own. _She_ was there, to stop him if she needed to, and he had faith that she would keep him from making a fatal mistake. It was, therefore, a strange experience to find himself envying someone their ability to fuck things up.  
  
All those months ago, when she had first picked up his contract, it had unnerved him that she set so few boundaries, gave so few orders. He was used to restriction, and the lack of it was disorienting, almost frightening. Even now the freedom he had with her was still new. How had he become so used to it, in less than a year? He'd told her, yesterday, he _knew_ he made his own choices. That was _expected_ now, it was understood. Taken for granted.  
  
And then, in the bunker, thrust back into a situation where he was powerless…  
  
He felt his airways tighten, and swallowed. No. Hancock might be more perceptive than he pretended, but still… Charon _had_ made choices, in the bunker. He could have let the yao-guai fucking kill him, but he'd fought. He’d seen his opportunity and pulled a man down into the pit, held him still as he was torn apart. He had made choices, and the results of those choices were _his;_ consequences he had earned. Hancock would not take that away from him.  
  
The silence continued, until the shadows lengthened, and Hancock raised his eyes to the sky.  
  
“You think we’ll make Oberland before nightfall?” he asked.  
  
Sloan sighed, and raked a hand back through her hair. It seemed longer now, though it couldn’t have grown much in a few weeks, however long they had seemed.  
  
“I think so,” she said. “We can push on regardless. I just want to get back.”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“Do not stop for my sake,” Charon told him. “If I slow down I’ll take a buffout, even a med-X. I don’t want to stop another night. Not so close to Boston.”  
  
“Hey, it’s your call.”  
  
“Is it?” He grimaced. “It was not my call yesterday. And you _scolded_ me, for wanting to press on.”  
  
Hancock spluttered a laugh. “Fucking Christ. Fine, I scolded you. You were being an idiot. Ain’t no reason to suffer in silence.”  
  
“I know,” he said, ducking his head a little sheepishly. “And I _was_ stupid. I am not used to being injured. It is frustrating and I just — I don’t want to be out here.”  
  
“Hey, I get it.” He waved a hand. “Sometimes shit takes time, though. Gotta wait for wounds to heal before you throw yourself into another fight. There ain’t any rush. Better to take your time now than push too far and regret it.”  
  
Charon let out a strangled laugh. “A young one does not get to lecture _me_ about patience. Do you know how long I stood in front of a wall with nothing to fucking do? I know about waiting.”  
  
“So what changed?” Hancock lit a cigarette, and slipped his lighter back into his pocket as he blew a stream of smoke towards the sky.  
  
Charon paused. “I… don’t know,” he admitted.  
  
Sloan huffed a sigh of frustration, and rolled her eyes.  
  
“Come _on,_ you two. You both know the answer to that. You’re just being _men_ about it.”  
  
“’Being men’?” Charon raised a hairless brow.  
  
“Oh no, can’t talk about _trauma,_ can’t talk about emotional distress, gotta cover all that shit up with layers of chems and denial.”  
  
“You like our angst,” Hancock teased her with a grin. “Admit it, you think it’s hot.”  
  
“The whole dangerous, dark and potentially brooding thing? Totally hot. The actual suffering part?”  
  
“You’re determined to be serious about this, ain’tcha?”  
  
“Sweetheart. Light of my life. Fire of my loins.” She shook her head, and chuckled. “Look, if you actually _want_ an answer to that question: Charon is in the bad-dark-and-screamy place. Shit that’s obvious and natural the rest of the time isn’t obvious and natural now. That’s what’s changed.”  
  
“It isn’t screamy,” Charon told her, his forehead furrowing.  
  
She smiled at him. “No, well, fair enough. Mine is. Or maybe I just… described it wrong.” She hesitated, holding her hands out in front of her as if trying to determine the outline of something that did not have a shape. “It’s not… screams, exactly. It’s like… like the inside of your head is loud. Industrial noises and bullets and trucks, lights and… and thoughts… It just feels like all the space has filled up. All the space in your mind is consumed by the noise that isn’t noise. Like a television or radio that hasn’t been tuned. _Kkssch_.” She shook her head. “Trauma turns us into prey animals. It fills our minds up with noise and narrows our vision to a small point of light. You react. So it’s either fight or flight, and those aren’t the best options if the situation calls for patience and thought.”  
  
“The… loudness,” Hancock said pensively. “I get that. Not screaming, though. More like… like a waterfall. The roar of the void.”  
  
“Barbed wire,” Charon said.  
  
“Wire don’t make a noise.”  
  
“I _know_ that. It is just what came to mind. Barbed wire. It wraps around, keeps you from moving, digs into the skin.”  
  
“Good metaphor,” Sloan said.  
  
“I would like to be patient again,” he said. “The reacting is the worst part. I have no control over myself, my mind.”  
  
“You don’t need to worry about that right now,” she reminded him. “I have control, if you need it.”  
  
“Yes. I am not sure you realise how reassuring it is to know that.”  
  
He saw her smile to herself as she looked towards the horizon. “It’ll come back,” she said. “The control, the patience. This isn’t new territory, you’re just navigating it a little differently than you usually have to. Give it time.”  
  
Hancock chuckled. “Yeah, Ferryman. You just gotta be patient.”  
  
“I will hit you,” Charon said, and he laughed louder.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My workload is very high right now, sorry guys. It'll be high until... *checks calendar* October 20th. Fic will still happen, because if I don't unwind somehow I'll lose my mind, but if I can't get something up for a couple of weeks I'm not going to stress about it.
> 
> Personally I think Hancock's totally right. Charon's entitled to think of this shit however it helps him to get through it, though, and there's layers of crap there he's not ready to question yet.


	63. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home again, where the next stage of recovery involves some fairly intense fucking. (nsfw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look
> 
> it's not perfect. But if I keep staring at it it'll never be done, and I need to write school things. 
> 
> So. This is a chapter. It has its moments. 
> 
> It feels a little disjointed to me, even though I guess it's kind of meant to? so maybe in November I'll come back and play with it a bit.

  
The sun was setting, but they did not stop. Charon’s leg was killing him, and an hour earlier he had relented and asked Hancock for a buffout. He’d handed him a med-X as well and refused to take it back, and the cool length of it in Charon’s pocket was both a reassurance and an irritation.  
  
The stars were out by the time they reached Oberland Station. There were fires lit around the settlement, the light throwing a silhouette onto the side of the waystation. Tall, male.  
  
As they got closer, Charon realised it was Valentine.  
  
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said when they drew closer. “I was beginning to think things hadn’t gone according to plan.”  
  
“Charon had some injuries a stimpak wouldn’t heal,” Sloan told him, slinging her arms around his neck and giving the old synth a fierce hug. “We had to take our time getting back. Sorry if you worried.”  
  
“Eh, I’ll survive.” He gave her a smile, and then looked Charon up and down with a trace of concern on his face. “Glad to see you’re in one piece,” he told him. “Mostly, anyway.”  
  
“Thank you,” Charon said.  
  
“Don’t mention it.”  
  
Valentine fell in beside them as they turned south towards Boston, his hands in his coat pockets. Sloan slipped her arm through his, quietly catching him up on the bunker and its inhabitants. Charon could not make out what was said, or see their faces, and he grit his teeth as he forced himself to move faster.  
  
“— got all your caps back home safe,” he heard Valentine say as he drew alongside them. “You know, you really ought to be more careful about how you spend those things. Splash money around, doll, and it makes you a target.”  
  
“Hancock’s rich, and people don’t kidnap _his_ people.”  
  
“Hancock’s also scarier than you are.”  
  
She pouted at that, and the synth smiled at her, studying her face as they walked with his glowing amber eyes.  
  
“You planning on hunkering down in Diamond City?” he asked her quietly. “Need me to run interference with the Guards?”  
  
She breathed a sigh of relief. “God, Nicky. Thank you.”  
  
“No problem. Just give me a five minute head start when we get to Diamond City. You coming too, Hancock?”  
  
“Nah. Gotta get back. You know how it is.”  
  
Charon was not sure he did, but in truth he was desperate to be alone with Sloan again. Hancock had been… well, _supportive,_ or at least his own approximation of whatever that meant, but it still made Charon self-conscious to know he was there. He needed time to collapse in on himself without being observed.  
  
They moved through the darkening ruins in silence. As the white arrows and rhomboids that led the way to Diamond City became larger and more frequent, Sloan took Hancock’s hand, and pulled him into the shadow of a doorway.  
  
“Looks like this is where we part ways,” Nick said softly. “I’ll go try and occupy some of the guards.”  
  
Charon leant against the building with a sigh, using the opportunity to take the weight off his leg. His bandages would need to be changed again, no doubt, but they could do that tomorrow. He gave the synth a tight smile.  
  
“I appreciate that you would help with this,” he said. “I know you do not like me there.”  
  
“Not your fault,” he said roughly. “Just don’t like an unnecessary fuss. I’d say in this case, a bit of a fuss might be necessary.” He paused, blinking his glowing eyes. “And I was there, the last time they dragged the ghouls out of Diamond City. It’s not a thing I’d like to see happen again.”  
  
“I appreciate it,” he said again, and cleared his throat. “And… you helped her find me. Thank you. I owe —”  
  
“Hey, don’t worry about it. She’s got you covered.” He shifted, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. “I’ll head in. You take care, now.”  
  
He faded into the darkness, and a moment later Sloan and Hancock materialised out of the doorway.  
  
“You don’t have to leave,” Charon told him, and then wondered why he’d said it.  
  
Hancock smirked. “You need some alone time. And I got a settlement to run.” He gave him a lazy salute, and turned away. “See ya, brother,” he said. “Take care of our girl for me.”  
  
“ _Our_ girl,” Charon said as they made their way into Diamond City. “He said _our_.”  
  
“He did,” Sloan said. She looked tired. “He’s said it before.”  
  
“He has?”  
  
“Yes. Though I suppose it’s different now.”  
  
He almost reached out to her, but the glare of a Diamond City guard changed his mind. Valentine had thinned their ranks somehow, but there were still a few standing here and there, armed and unwelcoming. What would they do, if they knew he was sleeping with her? He imagined he’d be stoned in the street. Or perhaps they already suspected, had suspected from the first day she’d brought him here. Back when he had barely been aware she was a woman, let alone even _dreamt_ of touching her.  
  
He had been wound tight with fear, that day. Fear of a punishment she would never have given.  
  
Another guard stopped them on their way down the stairs, his face half-hidden by mirrored glasses.  
  
“Hey, vault-dweller, what’ve I told you —”  
  
“Oh for _fuck’s sake,_ Jason, don’t _fuck_ with me today, all right?” She gave him a look of tired frustration. “I’ve had a hell of a month, I don’t have the energy to deal with you being all racist at me today.”  
  
The man took a step back.  
  
“Sorry, Sloan… It ain’t my rules, you know. I just enforce them.” He turned his head towards Charon, and hesitated. “Is he… bothering you? You don’t need any help…?”  
  
She sighed, and pushed her hair back away from her forehead.  
  
“He’s my friend. He stays with me, and he stays at Home Plate. You leave us alone and we won’t cause trouble. Just, _god,_ I’m tired, Jason, okay? We’ll be here a few days and then we’ll fuck off again. You won’t see him. Just stay out of my face till then.”  
  
“Didn’t mean anything by it,” the guard muttered. “It’s just my job.”  
  
“I get it. But your job sucks.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Move along.”  
  
“That could have gone worse,” Charon murmured, stepping close to her as they hurried to her house.  
  
“Mmm. Jason’s all right. Problem is you can’t tell the good ones from the bad ones, most of the time.” She sighed, digging in a pocket for her keys as they walked. “I just wish they’d trust me not to make trouble. It’s not like I parade you around the marketplace.”  
  
He glanced around said marketplace, and caught the eye of a scowling woman in one of the shop fronts.  
  
“Perhaps we should have waited until later at night,” he suggested.  
  
“Fuck ‘em. They can suck it up and deal.”  
  
She unlocked the door to her house, and they slipped inside. When the door shut behind them, a weight lifted from Charon’s shoulders.  
  
It was familiar, and comfortable, in a way that was deeply surreal. To come back to this place, after where he had been… He had spent one of the best nights of his long, miserable life here. Sitting at that booth, drinking with her, his hand wandering up the inside of her forearm. Curled up beside her in her bed, watching her sleep. Ecstasy. It hardly seemed real, now.  
  
He limped through the house, slow, letting his eyes wander over familiar objects and trinkets. Her battered old teddy bear was lying on the bed, and the workshop was dishevelled, as if she had gone through it for something and hadn’t had time to tidy it up. Otherwise it was the same. Nothing had changed.  
  
He returned to her, his eyes running over the posters on the walls, the shelves. And there. The box that held his contract.  
  
“Home,” Sloan said. She looked as though she might cry.  
  
Charon took her pack from her shoulder, and set it down beside her chest of drawers. Then he slipped an arm around her, and pulled her close.  
  
“I brought you back again,” she said, her voice thick.  
  
“I know you did, Sloan.” He fisted a hand in her hair. “Thank you.”  
  
“Don’t… you don’t have to say that.”  
  
“But I mean it.” He wanted to say what it meant to him, how fucking rare it was that anyone had ever put themselves in danger for his sake, but the words stuck in his throat. Here, now, he didn’t want to dredge that shit up. This was a place of warmth. Comfort. “It is good to be here, that’s all,” he said instead. “I missed this place. Thought I might never see it again. Or you.”  
  
She tilted her face up towards his, reaching for him. His fucking leg hurt, and she was tired, but they were _alone_ and he had fucking _missed_ her, damnit. He bent to kiss her, and his breath caught in his chest as she responded, her arms sliding around his neck. He broke off for just a moment, to slide his hands down behind her thighs and lift her off the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed him again.  
  
It hit him all at once. The time spent away from her, the dark, the cell. The pain. The knowledge that he would have rotted away in there and no one but her would have missed him. He pressed her back against the wall, his hands grasping at her, pulling at her clothes. He wanted to chase away the ghosts of that place. He wanted to lose himself in her.  
  
“I missed you,” he mumbled, his lips rasping across the soft skin of her throat. “So fucking much. You’re all I want.” He sucked her skin between his lips, and bit down as gently as he could. “Mine. _My_ Sloan.”  
  
Her breathing had changed, become shallow, her chest rising and falling in uneven gasps. He pressed himself closer to her, his dick stiff, straining against his fly. He was on fire for her. He wanted to be inside her, enveloped by her, he wanted to lose himself in the heat of her. But he knew how fucking tired she was, how worn. It wasn’t fair to ask this of her now.  
  
He growled to himself, his hand twisting in the cloth of her shirt.  
  
“What is it?” she said, a little breathless.  
  
“You’re tired.”  
  
“So?”  
  
He grunted, frustrated, groping for some way to tell her how much he needed to connect with her. How much he wanted to reforge the links that had been strained and broken by their separation.  
  
“I missed you. I want… I _need_ …”  
  
“I know.” She kissed him fiercely. Then she pulled back with a soft laugh, cupping his face in her hands. “Don’t stop on my account, love.”  
  
“Tell me you want it,” he insisted. “I need you to _want_ it.”  
  
“I want it, I want it!”  
  
He let out a possessive growl and fastened his lips to her throat as he carried her across the room to drop her onto her bed. He was on her in a heartbeat, pulling at her jacket, her belt, the laces of her boots. She let him strip her, helping with fastenings and buckles, until she was sitting naked on the bed before him and he stopped, breathing heavily.  
  
“Your turn,” she prompted him gently.  
  
He nodded, pulling off his boots, then his clothes, his eyes locked on her. Now she was naked some of his urgency had left him; he had torn her open, peeled away the layers of the wasteland that separated them, and now there was just _her,_ pure and beautiful and _his_.  
  
He threw the last piece of his clothing onto the floor, and pushed her back onto the covers. He brushed his fingers against her opening, too impatient to wait, but she wasn’t as ready for this as he was. He felt a flare of ridiculous irritation, and kissed her instead; hungry, almost predatory.  
  
“You are not wet for me,” he growled against her lips.  
  
He heard her intake of breath and she pulled back just a little, her eyes shining with something he did not quite understand.  
  
“You keep talking like that, and I will be,” she teased, with the hint of a smile. “You want me to be submissive?”  
  
“No, I… I just…I _need you_.” He pressing his forehead against hers, closed his eyes. “I need you, I — I need to be inside you, to — to love you, to _have_ you.”  
  
“You have me. I’m yours.”  
  
She could say she was _his_ all night and that wouldn’t make it so. He needed more than words. He kissed her again, impatient, his teeth catching on her lips.  
  
“You were away from me for too long,” he muttered between kisses, more to himself than to her. “You’re mine, you should be with me.”  
  
She hummed against his lips, and put a hand to his shoulder, pushing gently.  
  
“I need a rad-X,” she said when he let her up for air. “In — in my bedside drawer.”  
  
He pulled back so she could hunt for them, but a moment later he found himself reaching for her again, running a hand down the curve of her ass, kissing the back of her shoulder.  
  
“You missed me, huh?” she said, slipping a pill onto her tongue.  
  
He said nothing. Instead he grabbed her thighs and pulled her back underneath him, and she squealed, her eyes shining. He kissed her lips again, a trace of bitter rad-X on her tongue, then down across her shoulder, her breast, her belly, to the knot of curls between her thighs.  
  
He hadn’t tasted her before — which seemed, now, an unforgivable oversight. He paused just a moment before he dragged his tongue along her slit. She arched up from the mattress, whimpering, curling her fingers into his hair. It was _intoxicating._ Her scent, her taste, her little gasps and moans. If he didn’t want so desperately to be inside her he could have eaten her out all night.  
  
Instead he rose, sliding back over her to press his forehead against hers, his cock hard against her thigh.  
  
“Now? I _want_ you.”  
  
“Now,” she agreed, and he thrust himself inside her.  
  
_This,_ god, _this_ was what he needed — not booze or chems or vengeance. He needed _this,_ this blinding white-hot pleasure, this _woman,_ this joining. He needed to be _hers_ again.  
  
She clenched around him and he groaned, burying his face in her shoulder.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” he growled against her neck. “I fucking _need_ this, I need _you_.”  
  
She moaned something incoherent, shifting her hips to meet his thrusts. She was so _perfect_ it fucking hurt.  
  
“ _Mine,_ ” he muttered. It repeated itself like a refrain with every thrust, _mine mine mine_ echoing in his head until something broke in him, the words dissolving into nonsense, the world fading until there was nothing but _her,_ the softness of her skin under his hands, the fucking heat of her clenching around his cock.  
  
His orgasm hit him all at once, hard, and he let out a shout as he spent himself in her.  
  
“ _Fuck._ ” His breath caught, and when the last pulses of pleasure had throbbed through him he pressed his forehead against hers, panting. “Fuck. I, fuck, I needed that.” Her eyes were still glazed with lust, and he circled his hips slowly, lowering his head to kiss the side of her throat. “You are _so good,_ woman. Fuck. What — what do you need? What should I…”  
  
“Hands,” was all she said.  
  
Instead he kissed his way down her body, teeth nipping gently at her skin, and then returned to where he had started, his mouth on her cunt. Tasting his own seed in her was overwhelming, exhilarating; almost enough to get him hard again. Fuck.  
  
He slipped two fingers inside her, and she moaned, raising her hips. He held her down, mouth on her clit, fingers curling, and it was only a few moments before she came with a high-pitched gasp.  
  
He waited until the aftershocks of her orgasm had eased, and pushed himself up onto his knees, raising his fingers to his mouth to lick them clean. She was red-cheeked and sweaty and rumpled and perfect and he wanted her _again_. Again and again, until there was no memory of that place left in him, no thought of being anywhere but here with her.  
  
But the urgency that had seized him earlier had faded, and the pain of his leg was fighting through the post-sex haze of hormones. He felt suddenly as exhausted as she looked, and after a moment of hesitation, he let the desire go. There would be time enough for fucking in the morning. She wasn’t going anywhere.  
  
He sank onto the bed beside her, and she found his hand with hers.  
  
“Better?” she asked.  
  
“Yes.” He swallowed. He had been rough and she had let him, and he didn’t know whether he should thank her or apologise. “You — are you…?”  
  
She smiled. “I’m perfect.”  
  
“Yes. You are.”

 

 

 


	64. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleep: Attempt 1

Rest. At last.   
  
Even just lying in bed with her was a gift, after where he had been. Once under the covers she found his hand, interlacing her fingers with his, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. She looked sleepy, in a rumpled, pink-cheeked sort of way. Soft, content. Different from the tightly-wound exhaustion on her face when they had stepped through the door.  
  
Even Charon was tired. He had last slept only a couple of nights ago, on a fuckton of radiation no less, but that had been a sleep more of recovery than it was rest. The last two days had worn on him. Stress, frustration, and walking on an injured leg… It would do him good to sleep. He had slept here before, safe in the knowledge that no one could get through those thick concrete walls, that heavy steel door. He may as well get what rest he could. There was no place in the Commonwealth he felt as safe as he did here.   
  
Then she turned out the light.  
  
Without the stars or firelight, the darkness was complete. Heavy, smothering; he couldn’t see where he was, couldn’t feel the bed under him. His chest seized and he bit back a cry of terror.  
  
“Turn it back on,” he said in a strangled voice. He squeezed his eyes shut until she complied, hands fisting in the sheets.  
  
“Charon?” She turned back to him, sliding closer, but she didn’t touch him. “Charon, are you…?”  
  
For half a heartbeat he’d been back on the cold cell floor and that was enough to disconnect him, to make him wonder whether he was _still there,_ whether this was really happening, whether he was safe. Or hell, whether his kidnapping had happened at all or if he’d just dreamt it. He didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t tell what was real. He pushed himself up from the pillow and grabbed for the bandage on his arm, ripping it, tearing it off, until he could see the row of neat stitches and the dent of the yao-guai’s bite.   
  
He ran his fingers over the newly forming scar tissue, slowly coming back to himself, enough to notice he was breathing heavily. He swallowed, and looked over his shoulder. She was sitting close, half-turned towards him, her hands in her lap.  
  
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll leave the light on.”  
  
“It was dark,” he rasped. “I can’t go back to the dark. I can’t, I… There was a voice.”  
  
“It’s okay,” she said again.   
  
She turned, so her shoulder grazed his arm, and sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, looking down at her toes. She knew he needed space, and she was giving it to him. Her eyes wandered away, like they had the night when he had dreamt of the scientist, and begged her not to look at him.  
  
“You want to talk about the voice?” she asked after a moment.  
  
He swallowed, and looked back down at the tear in his arm. It healing well, thanks to all the radiation he had absorbed at the doctor’s house on the hill, but the yao-guai had taken a little muscle as well as skin. There was a deep divot in his flesh, and the growing scar tissue stood out even on a ghoul. Raised and pink, the stitches dark against his skin, a little dried blood in the crevasses. He ran his fingers over it again. It had happened, and it was healing. Those two things meant he was safe. That she had come for him. That he wasn’t losing his mind.  
  
“There was a voice,” he said again. “It was new. It wasn’t there before. I told you, about… about the other time, in the dark.”  
  
“I remember.”  
  
“I didn’t know how long they would leave me there. The other time there were screams, whispers. Sounds that made no sense. This time there was just the voice, speaking in my head. I didn’t want to believe it, but the things it said… That you would not come for me, you were finally rid of me, that I was f-fucking _selfish_ …” He took a breath, and found he couldn’t stop, he was gasping, and then the gasps turned into sobs and he grabbed for the blankets, for anything, just so he had something to hold onto. Sloan crawled into his lap and wrapped her arms around his chest, her head on his shoulder, and he grasped her like a life preserver. He crushed her close to him, tighter and tighter, until he heard her sharp intake of breath and the contract’s whip had him scrambling across the bed.   
  
Bells rang in his ears, sirens, agony shrieking through every nerve. He gasped, struggling for breath.   
  
“Charon?”  
  
He shook his head, fighting dizziness and nausea. As the pain began to fade, he curled himself into a ball, his forehead pressed against the blankets.  
  
“What happened?” she asked him softly.  
  
“Too tight,” he lamented. “I hurt you.”  
  
“Only a little.” She crawled a little closer, one hand hovering above his back. “Tight is good.”  
  
“I would have cracked your ribs,” he said miserably. At least, with his chest pressed against his legs, his sobs had eased. He closed his eyes.   
  
“Worth it,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice.   
  
“The contract does not think so.”  
  
“ _Oh._ Oh, fuck that thing.” She bent down to rest her cheek against his back, and sighed. “I hate that I keep hurting you.”  
  
Charon stayed there, the reassuring weight of her resting against his back, until he had regained control of his breathing and the nausea had faded away. He shifted, and he felt her lift her head so he could straighten. She looked small, to him. Small, and tired, and sad.  
  
“You didn’t hurt me, smoothskin,” he told her, and swallowed. “You know you’re the best employer I can remember. You think I don’t appreciate you? You wouldn't hurt me.” She crossed her long legs and tipped her head to the side, but said nothing, and he reached across to cup her cheek with one hand. He let out a shaky breath. “Beauty, you’re the only one who has ever thought of this shit as a responsibility. Everyone else just gives whatever thoughtless orders come to mind.”  
  
She swallowed, and leant into his hand.  
  
“I know it’s stupid to say it’s not fair, but… I would have been on board with some cracked ribs, if it made you feel a little better.”  
  
“Smoothskin…”  
  
“That’s what stimpaks are for.”  
  
He shook his head, and pulled her gently back into his lap, careful this time not to hold her too tight.   
  
“You’ve gotten bony,” he said, closing his hand around her upper arm. “You will look like a wastelander if you aren’t careful.”  
  
“It’s been a stressful month,” she said, leaning against his chest with a sigh.   
  
“You must eat.”   
  
“I’ve been eating. Just a little less than I should have been, that’s all.” She held out a hand, examining the more prominent bone at her wrist. “It’s hard to get enough calories out in the wasteland sometimes, and I kept forgetting to eat something. I’ll put the weight back on, don’t worry.”  
  
“I do worry,” he rasped.  
  
She made a quiet little humming sound, and reached up to run her fingertips along the scar on his forearm.   
  
“It’s healing,” she said.   
  
“The radiation helped.”  
  
“Can I…?” She pulled away from him, turning to place her palm, very gently, over the bandage on his chest.   
  
He nodded. Her hands were always quick, her fingers always clever, but tonight she took her time as she unwound the cloth and peeled away first the bandage on his shoulder, then the square of gauze pressed to his chest. Slow, and tender. She examined the four parallel gashes on his pectoral, her fingers hovering just above them. The wounds were deep, healing slowly. She traced the length of them, leaning close, her breath warm on his skin. Then she sat back on her heels, and started to cry.  
  
He gathered her to him, and she pressed her face into the crook of his neck.  
  
“I’m all right,” he said, his voice gruffer than usual.   
  
She shook her head. “I missed you s-so much,” she gulped. “I woke up and you were _gone._ I th-thought you were dead, I thought —”  
  
“Shh. It’s all right, smoothskin.”  
  
“— and then when we found you, _god,_ you were a _mess,_ I thought they’d b-broken you and I’d never get you back, I thought we’d never get you out of there, you were going to die on me — if Bethany wasn’t there I don’t know what we would have done, I don’t —” She broke off, taking harsh breaths, her eyelashes wet against his neck. “It was _my_ _fault,_ I was asleep and I didn’t wake up, and then it was — it was hours later and you weren’t there. And then, when I found your things — I didn’t know who those people were, or what they might have done to you. I was afraid they’d just kill you, or that I’d pay the ransom and they wouldn’t give you back.”  
  
She was tearing his heart out and he wished he knew what to say to make it better. He cradled her helplessly against his chest.  
  
“No. You cannot blame yourself for this. Please,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. It was _so stupid._ ” He grazed his lips across her hair, and closed his eyes. “I didn’t know what they’d done to you. They could have hurt you, or… or touched you. And I should have been there to keep you safe.”  
  
“I _was_ safe,” she said, sniffling. “ _You_ weren’t safe.”  
  
“I thought they knew me, or some of them did. I thought… they might have come for my contract, and if you didn’t have it…”  
  
“No. They wanted money. They left a note, with your things, by the river.” She pulled back a little, wiping the tears from her face. “Fifteen thousand caps.”  
  
He took a breath, air hissing through his teeth. “That… I am not worth that much.”  
  
“I would have paid it, no question," she said, the waver fading from her voice. "If I hadn’t been able to track them down, I would have paid it.”  
  
“Smoothskin, you would _never_ get that much if you sold my contract.”  
  
“Idiot,” she said softly. “I had the caps. I wouldn’t miss them. I had to give them to them anyway, just so they’d think they were safe. Nick brought them back when we’d killed them.”  
  
“You have _fifteen thousand_ caps?”  
  
“More. Haven’t really counted it, to be honest. I keep a vague tally on the inside of the safe, but it’s mostly a ballpark.”  
  
Charon was astounded. She had been here little over a year; how had she accumulated that amount? He knew she did jobs, that she scavenged, but it was an incomprehensible amount of money to him. No wonder his kidnappers had been watching her.   
  
“How did you get that much money? What do you _do_ with it?”  
  
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “That’s the point. I scav stuff, I sell stuff, but I hardly ever buy anything. Can’t buy a car. Can’t buy books or music or designer duds. Even food I mostly find or catch. I end up storing more stims and chems than I use. What am I going to spend it on?”  
  
“I had not really thought about it. Guns?”  
  
“I mean, sure, if I find one I like, why not? But most of my favourites I took off other people. Like that shotgun. Found that baby in a trunk in an office building’s basement.” She kissed his neck, in a way Charon felt all the way down his spine. “You want the fifteen thousand?” she asked. “You can have ‘em. You’re worth every cap.”  
  
He wasn’t, and she was a fool. A sweet fool, but a fool all the same.  
  
“What would _I_ do with it?”  
  
She shrugged. “You can think about it. I know you don’t, usually. Think about what you can and can’t do, I mean. So… think about it. Maybe there’s something you want. And don’t say, like, ‘peace of mind’.” She grinned. “Something caps can buy.”  
  
“I will think about it,” he said, just to keep her happy.  
  
She nuzzled herself into his shoulder again, careful to avoid his yao-guai bites, and lifted her fingers to trace the lines of his new-forming scars. They were broad and an angry red, the stitches strained here and there where he had pushed his luck too far on their way back.  
  
“Will they fade?” she asked. “You don’t see many scars on ghouls. Hancock has a couple, but I don’t think other people really notice them.”  
  
“Ghouls are _all_ scar,” Charon told her. “Eventually, in a year or two, it will all look more or less the same.”  
  
“Pity. They are _really_ cool.”  
  
“You think so?” Though he supposed, as he looked down at her face, that he shouldn’t really be surprised.  
  
She smirked at him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you girls dig scars?”  
  
He snorted. “Most of them draw a line somewhere before ghouls.”  
  
“Their loss.” She kissed his neck. “Anyway, that’s only because they don’t know the secret of _texture._ ”  
  
He chuckled, and bent to rest his cheek against her hair.   
  
“You are good at this,” he said after a while.  
  
“At what?”  
  
“At the… the talking down. Distracting, anchoring. You are good at that. You have been since Abernathy Farm.”  
  
“I’ve had practice on both sides of the equation.”  
  
“The ferals?”  
  
“The ferals. The vault. The ambush, when Ashford was killed. Other things that happened after the ambush.”  
  
“I thought they sent you home,” he said. He hadn’t thought a lot about her experiences in the Sino-American war. She rarely brought it up, and aside from her experience as a sniper, it was something that tended to slip his mind.   
  
“They did, but not for long. I had to see out my tour. They sent me back home for some R and R, a few mandatory counselling sessions, and then I was re-deployed. Eighteen months, all up. But it was…” She sat up a little straighter. “It was harder once you were back. Out there, yeah, war is hell and everything, but you were surrounded by your comrades. They all _knew,_ like, they _got_ it. But when you come home, you’re so isolated. Everyone’s just been living their happy little lives while you’ve been off getting shot at. Nothing’s changed for them. And you’re carrying round all these graves in your heart. I didn’t mind going back. I _wanted_ to go back. But…”  
  
“This was the… the thing you mentioned, on our way home. Hancock told me not to ask.”  
  
“Yes.” She shifted in his arms. There was something in her eyes, something distant. “I’ll tell you, if you want to know. It’s only fair.”  
  
It seemed a large thing, to get to ask this sort of question. Something that would hurt.   
  
“Yes,” he said.   
  
“It was a hard war. We did things, and they did things, that neither of us should have done. The rules of war… You understand?”  
  
He nodded, and she continued, her head resting against his shoulder.  
  
“There was… an incident. One of their chemical weapons. A little like mustard gas, I guess, but faster. I was travelling with a group of soldiers, through Alaska. Maybe half of us were infantry… the rest of us were support, tech, that sort of thing. We were crossing a bridge. Five trucks, people-movers. The first three got hit pretty bad and the rest of us broke formation, barrelled the fuck out of the trucks and jumped into the river. It was late. Late in the year. Ice near the banks. _So_ cold.”  
  
“You were hurt?” He didn’t want to think about it. He knew about that gas, somehow he knew. It _burned._  
  
“I didn’t…” She stopped, and took a breath. “Didn’t escape the gas… tried to wash it off in the river, but… some people just couldn’t. I was lucky, avoided the worst of it. There was a lot of screaming, from the river, and from the trucks, the people who couldn’t get out. It blinds you, you know? People can’t see to get away. You get a lungful of that stuff… couple of minutes and you’re drowning in your own blood. The _sound_. Then someone started firing at the river. Don’t even know who. Might have been one of ours, panicking; might have been the enemy trying to finish us off. Had to dive, and swim. Lots of blood in the water. Few of us got away. Twelve, out of more than a hundred. Pulled myself out of the water about a click downriver. Took me six stimpaks to get rid of the burns.”  
  
“ _Fucking_ hell,” he rasped. He pressed his forehead against her temple for a moment, and kissed her cheek. “I am so sorry, beauty. I shouldn’t have asked.”  
  
“It was quick,” she said. “All over so fast. For a while I was fine, but then later… I kept hearing it, over and over. The sound of people drowning in their blood. Gurgling. Panicked splashing in the river as they tried to get away. The screams.” She sighed, but then she tilted her face up to look at him, and forced a smile. “It’s hard to think about, but I had some support. They had counselling services, sent me off to recuperate at one of their facilities for a month or so. I knew Nate was out there, fighting for me, for America. And knowing that once I got through it, law school was waiting for me… it really helped, having something to work for. I knew I’d done my part.”  
  
“They should have let you go after your partner was killed,” he grumbled.   
  
“Maybe,” she said. “Still… I mean, you know going in that chances are, you’re not going to come out of it in one piece. I did okay. I have all my limbs, most of my sanity. I was lucky. Nate was career, though, so. He only got his discharge when Shaun was born. Twelve years. He had a lot more crap to work through than I did. The killing was tough, maybe more for him than for me, even. He was a good guy. The all-American boy next door. Grew up on a farm and everything. And it wasn’t like now, when if someone shoots at you you’re pretty sure they’re a dick. These guys weren’t assholes, they were just… the other side. Same as us, with a different flag sewn on their jackets. They were just following orders.”  
  
That sentiment felt unnervingly familiar. Charon tried to nail it down in his mind, but it kept slipping away from him.   
  
“Let’s talk about something less dark, can we?” she said, tracing a finger along his collarbone. “You can tell me about… something good that you remember. Do you remember anything good?”  
  
“Killing Ahzrukhal,” Charon said absently. He was still trying to get a grip on the elusive almost-memory.  
  
“Something that didn’t involve killing.”  
  
Charon huffed a sigh, and thought back, carefully avoiding the times and places that he knew very well contained nothing good.  
  
“One of my employers had a daughter,” he said at last. “She used to smile at me.”  
  
Sloan looked up at him for a long moment, and then wound her arms around his neck.  
  
“That must be one of the top five most heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard you say. Jesus Christ.”  
  
“It is not a sad thing,” he said. “It was a good thing. It… it was nice. I wanted to smile back, but…” He put a hand on her back, wondering idly to himself what the others might have been. “You keep a list?”  
  
She chuckled, and pulled back a little so she could see his face. “I missed you a whole lot, you know that?”   
  
“I did know that,” he confessed, and risked a small smile. She looked tired, but so damn beautiful. “Is that a liberty?” he wondered aloud. “To assume that sort of thing?”  
  
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re teasing,” she guessed.   
  
He hadn’t been, really, and it caught him off-guard.   
  
“It shouldn’t be,” he said. “But it feels wrong, to just… _expect_ something so…” He gestured helplessly. “I know you care, smoothskin, but…”  
  
“I like you to have liberties,” she reminded him. “As many as you can. You know that by now, Charon.”   
  
He did know that, and yet it was an immense thing, to be missed. And to _expect_ to be missed, to be this close to someone… Why was he thinking of liberties now? He was naked in her bed, for fuck’s sake. _That_ was not a liberty, but this was? Sloan never cared about liberties. _He_ cared about liberties. Why?  
  
She lifted a hand to smother a yawn, and he shook his head, dislodging the thought. She had been so tired when they walked in the door. He had kept her awake far too long.   
  
“You’re exhausted,” he said, and gave her a gentle shake. “You should get back into bed.”  
  
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she admitted as she climbed under the covers.   
  
“You have not been eating, you have not been sleeping,” he scolded her, and ignored the painful way his chest was clenching. “You must take care of yourself, smoothskin.”  
  
“I had something on my mind,” she mumbled, turning onto her stomach and wrapping her arms around a pillow.   
  
“Beauty. Please. You will kill yourself trying to live on chems and nuka quantum.”  
  
“Nag.” She smiled. “You’re home now. For the next few days we can spend all our time eating and sleeping, if that’s what you want. Happy?”  
  
He lay down beside her, and sighed. Maybe not happy… Happy would take time. But he was safe, and warm, and in her bed. For the moment, he was close enough.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New one-shot soonish, so keep an eye out for that. ^_^


	65. Undeserving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cut it out, so's it won't fester.

  
  
He did not sleep that night. He was unsure whether he would ever sleep again.  
  
Soon after she had drifted off, he had slipped out from underneath the covers and found his clothes. He took a blanket, wrapped around his shoulders to keep out the chill, and climbed up to sit in the hut on her roof. He could not have said what brought him there… it was quiet enough in her house, but there was something peaceful about being up here, looking out over the city with its handful of lights. In one alleyway, the blinking neon of Valentine’s sign. The strange robot selling noodles at the marketplace. The distant sound of a baby crying.  
  
Hours later she pushed open the trap door, her face a mask of anxiety. She let out a loud sigh when she saw him.  
  
“God, Charon. You scared me.”  
  
Apologies sounded hollow, and he didn’t feel like making one. Instead he held out an arm for her to slip under the blanket beside him, and she nestled up against his side.  
  
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”  
  
“It’s okay. I just couldn’t find you, and last time I couldn’t find you…”  
  
He winced. “I did not think of that,” he confessed.   
  
“You want me to sit up with you?”  
  
“Of course not, smoothskin. You need your sleep.”  
  
“I’m asking if you would like company,” she said patiently. “Don’t worry about my sleep.”  
  
He _did_ want her company. Desire warred with duty in his mind.  
  
“I will come back down with you,” he said at last.   
  
He wondered, as he followed her slowly down the stairs, whether her shack on the roof had been the first place she had looked for him. He hoped it was. He didn’t like the mental image of her waking, confused, then stumbling through her house in a panic as she tried to find him. Thoughtless of him. He should have left a note, or something. At least she had paused long enough to find her underwear and a shirt before heading out into the cold.  
  
She slipped back into bed, and when he climbed in beside her the sheets were warm and smelt of her. She slotted herself in against his side, her arm across his waist, and closed her eyes. The bedside lamp threw its soft golden light over her, shining on her hair like dawn. The thought of the darkness rose in his mind, that brief terrifying moment when he had found himself back on that cell floor. No. He was here now. He was safe, and she wouldn't turn the light out again.  
  
He didn’t want to sleep, and risk whatever terrors it might bring. But he didn’t need to sleep to get some rest. Being here, with her… it was soothing. He could lie here a while. It was better than being up on the roof. He stared up at the ceiling, letting the moment settle over him. The light and shadow, the mattress at his back, the warmth of Sloan and the weight of her.  
  
When he thought about it, when he really recognised the reality of what his life had become… It was ridiculous. Almost too much. Sloan, who was beautiful and passionate and made him smile — Sloan, who was his employer, a smoothskin, and yet who held him here, like this, and trusted him more than anyone else he could remember; who rescued him and brought him home to her house, an island of safety in a smoothskin city. How did he get here? How did he go from protecting a Gunner who hated looking at him to _this,_ in, what, seven, eight months? Less than a year. Hardly any time at all.  
  
It had all seemed to change so naturally, so slowly. Going from the haze of love he’d been in, to the bunker and back… that had shaken him up. It _hadn’t_ been slow. In the course of his long lifetime a lot of things had been slow. This? This was _fast_. It had happened without him really noticing it, too fast to guard against. He’d gotten used to her, and this new life. Enough that he’d become habituated to the freedoms she gave him. This part, though… the love, the embrace… it was still new enough to be precious. He’d allowed himself to enjoy the pleasures of it without thinking about what it really meant. It was so strange, almost alien, to lie in bed holding another person. A miracle, really. He was _safe,_ with this woman in his arms… The ghouls at Underworld would be shocked by the idea of a human embracing a ghoul like this. It was a miracle even to touch her, and know she wouldn’t cringe away.   
  
How did he get here? From Ahzrukhal and murderers and sick demented fucks to _this?_   
  
He wanted to turn and bury his face in her neck and tell her he loved her until his throat was hoarse, to kiss her until both their lips were raw. How had this happened? How had he fallen into this situation, with this woman who was beautiful and brave and clever, a woman who against all reason somehow _cared_ for him?  
  
What had he ever done, to make this something he deserved? _This_ was an aberration, not the bunker. He belonged there. The bunker was just the universe putting things back the way they should be. The last two hundred years were enough evidence of that.   
  
This… this wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve her, or this feeling of safety, or — or any of it.   
  
There was a catch in his breath, and before he could quell it she raised her head, her hair falling across her face.  
  
“What is it, love?” she murmured.  
  
“Love,” he echoed, raising a trembling hand to her cheek. “You l-love me.”   
  
“You know that.”  
  
“I d-do, but… I don’t… I-I don’t know…”  
  
“I’m not following you, Charon.”  
  
“It — it’s strange to feel safe. To b-be here. With you. I don’t…” He let his head fall back onto the pillow, and stared up at the ceiling. “The other man, in the bunker… he had been dead maybe a day or two. Why me and not him? Why did I live through all I lived through? Why am I _here?_ ”  
  
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said slowly. “What made you start thinking about this?”  
  
He shook his head, lifting a hand as if he could sketch in the air what he had difficulty describing in words.  
  
“I was trying to… Sometimes, when things are… hard, when there are shadows in my head, I think about… what can I see, what can I hear? It helps to know where I am. To tie myself to the moment.”  
  
“Mindfulness.”  
  
“I don’t know what it is called. It is just… a technique. Attention to the task at hand. To the moment. Like when I clean the guns.” He cleared his throat. “So… I could see the ceiling, the shadows. Heard nothing but your breathing. Felt your skin on mine. It wasn’t right.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“I don’t know. It is safe here and it doesn’t feel right. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t _belong_ here. And you… you are too much.”  
  
She shifted, pushing herself up off the bed, mumbling an apology as she went, and he reached for her in alarm.  
  
“No — no, don’t — Sloan, I don’t _want_ you to move away, it is not _you,_ it’s _me,_ my head, I — I am no good at loving people, it is painful and hard and — and I don’t deserve it.”  
  
She looked down at him with a soft fondness on her face, and then she curled up on the bed beside him, her head on the pillow.  
  
“I loved my son the moment he was born,” she said. “He hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve it, and I still loved him.” She pressed her lips together. “I even loved him the day I killed him. Love doesn’t care about deserving. I don’t know what love is or how it works, I just know that logic and reason don’t seem to have much to do with it.”  
  
He sighed, reaching out almost without thinking to rest his hand on her hip.   
  
“It was easier before,” he said. “It was different then, before the bunker, before I remembered where we are. _What_ we are. After the night in the cave… I was dreaming.”  
  
“Love, maybe I’m just tired, but you’re not making a lot of sense.”  
  
“You told me you _loved me,_ ” he said. “And then… It was just us, and the wasteland. I could have been… I pretended that I was someone different. A man whose skin hadn’t fallen off. A man without a contract. When you looked at me I could pretend that there was no one else in the world, and none of it mattered. I was dreaming. But I am awake now and I have remembered who I am. And I don’t…  In a dream, I might deserve this. But now? In the real world?”  
  
“Charon…”   
  
“The voice mocked me for it, for hoping you’d come for me after I had failed you. How could I hope for that? For you to risk your life for me? For _me?_ ” He pushed himself up off the bed with a laugh. “It was right. I was pathetic. _Wanting_ orders from you, if that meant I could see you again. An _employer_ cannot love me. What have I done that wasn’t someone’s order? What do I _have_ except my shotgun? Everything of mine is already yours. I am _nothing_. So why am I _here?_ ”  
  
“Charon, remember when you told me to leave you behind?”  
  
He stopped, turning back to her to look down into her eyes.  
  
“I am doing it again?”  
  
“I think so.” She sat up, curling her legs under her and reaching out to touch his arm. “Or something like it. What’s this about?” When he said nothing, she gave him the ghost of a smile. “I don’t think this is about love. And I don’t think this is about me. What made you think about deserving?” He stared at her, hesitating, and she shifted towards him a little. “You mentioned the man in the bunker,” she prompted him.  
  
“H-he was dead.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You came for me. The man in the other cell, no one came for him. No one killed for him. He might have had a family. So many cells… bones and corpses no one came for. The thing against the wall. What did they do to deserve that? But you came for me. I have killed, I have done — Don’t tell me it was not my fault. They were not my choice but they were still my actions. My hands, my knife, my gun. But those people died, and I lived. And I…” He trailed off, his throat dry. He’d almost said _I shouldn’t have,_ and it disturbed him.   
  
“Do you know the term ‘survivor’s guilt’?” Sloan asked him.  
  
He stilled, and she reached out to take his hand, running her fingers over his knuckles.  
  
“We came as soon as we could,” she said softly. “Maybe if we’d been a day earlier, he might have lived. But I wasn’t there for him. I came for _you._ ” She looked up, held his eyes. “Because I’m a selfish woman, and I wanted you back.”  
  
“Sloan…”  
  
“If there’s guilt, it’s on me.”  
  
He nodded slowly, and swallowed.   
  
“If you were a different employer… No one else would have come. Ever. They would have cut off my fingers and sent them back, and still no one would have paid the ransom they asked. No other employer would have risked their necks for me. Even the Wanderer wouldn’t have come for me. I’m not sure he would have noticed I was gone.”  
  
“They didn’t know what they had,” she said, dropping her eyes to study the back of his hand. “Whenever I’m tempted to think that people are basically good, I remember that you went for centuries without working for a decent person.”  
  
“They knew,” he said. “They knew exactly what they had. A slave, a weapon. You’re the one who thinks I’m… I’m something different. You are outnumbered, smoothskin. Stands to reason they were right, and you are wrong.”  
  
“You don’t seriously believe that,” she murmured. “I know you don’t believe that. You’re not a slave.”  
  
“No,” he admitted. “I am not a slave. I am not something that is owned. But still… I am a weapon. My purpose is to defend and to follow orders, to obey my employer. To kill. You put more value in me than that. I am not used to it. I think I am, I think I understand what it is to be valued, to be an _equal,_ even, but something happens and I realise I have no idea what it is to live like this. Knowing I have value. That this — here, with you — might be something I can have.” Something in him revolted against it even as he said it, and he grimaced, turning his face away. “All of this… Why is this _hard?_ ”  
  
“Give it time. You’ll get the hang of it. You’ve only been hanging out with me for, what… not even close to a year, yet. You’ve got lifetimes of bullshit to unlearn.”   
  
“Maybe,” he said, looking at his hand, clasped between hers. “Too much has changed. The bunker was… bad. But it was a bad I knew. Familiar. This… it is too different. Too different from everything that came before. For a moment, it felt wrong.”  
  
“You _do_ belong here,” she told him, and then broke off, releasing his hand to smother a yawn. “You belong with me,” she mumbled.  
  
“I kept you up again,” he rasped. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“I don’t mind.”   
  
“ _Bed,_ smoothskin.”  
  
She gave him a tired smile, and turned to crawl back under the blankets. She patted the mattress beside her, and waited until he had joined her before she laid her head back on her pillows.  
  
“Anyway, I think you’re wrong about that kid,” she said, closing her eyes. “The Wanderer. When he sent you away, you told me he wanted you to find a worthy employer. He must’ve thought highly enough of you he figured most people weren’t.”  
  
“You think so?” He rested his head on the pillow beside hers.  
  
“You think so too. Or it wouldn’t have hurt, when he sent you away.”  
  
“You make too much sense, sometimes,” he told her.  
  
“You know you’re in trouble when the crazy ones start to make sense.”  
  
He had to smile at that.  
  
“You are trying to make me laugh.”  
  
She opened one eye. “Is it working?”  
  
“Almost.”  
  
“Can I touch you again?”  
  
He sighed, and wrapped an arm around her to pull her close.  
  
“You could always touch me, smoothskin. I told you not to move away.”  
  
“I’d overwhelmed you.”  
  
He was about to deny it, but he caught himself, turning the idea over in his mind.  
  
“Do you think that’s what it was?”  
  
“It’s not so long ago that you barely touched me at all. And you’ve been to hell and back the last few weeks. I’d be surprised if you _weren’t_ a bit twitchy and over-stimulated.” She was quiet for a moment, her eyebrows pinched together. “I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said I thought they’d broken you.”  
  
“I have survived worse.”  
  
“No, I meant… that maybe you’d gone somewhere in your mind. Somewhere else. Another time, maybe. That you could be trapped reliving some old trauma and you wouldn’t remember me.” She grimaced, and shook her head. “God, that wasn’t meant to sound so selfish.”  
  
“Only eight months,” he said. “Eight months, compared to centuries. You may as well have been a dream.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
His lips twitched into a wry smile. “No, smoothskin. I would not forget you so easily. I thought of you.” Nearly constantly, in fact… and perhaps not in the way she would have wanted him to think of her. But she didn’t need to know that.   
  
He drew her closer still, and caught her smile as she curled an arm around his shoulder. Her skin was cool, soothing; she fit into his arms like she was meant to be there. Whatever it was that had seized him earlier had slunk back into the shadows. It no longer felt wrong to lie here with her. Now it felt reassuring, and deeply comfortable. Too comfortable.   
  
He shouldn’t have come back down here. He was tired, utterly worn out mentally if not physically, and yet he desperately did not want to sleep. The moment of darkness after she had turned out the light had deeply shaken him, and he didn’t want to let loose whatever else was lurking in his mind.  
  
“I should go back up,” he whispered to her. “I cannot sleep.”  
  
“You c’n borrow a book or smthin’,” she mumbled.   
  
“No, I — I don’t — ” He stopped, and took a deep breath. “You are soft, and… comforting. If I stay here I might fall asleep. I cannot fall asleep.”  
  
She pulled back, and he saw her face knit up in confusion as she opened her eyes.   
  
“You can’t sleep, but you can sleep? What?”  
  
He pressed his forehead up against hers with a sigh.  
  
“I am afraid,” he confessed. “I might have dreams.”  
  
She tightened her arm against his back.   
  
“Well… if you do, I’ll wake you up. And I’ll be here. Okay? You don’t have to stay in bed. You can go read in the kitchen, or look through all my guns, or something. Just try not to sit up on the roof for hours, love. It’s getting cold at nights.”  
  
It had always been far too easy to fall asleep next to her. He waited only until he was sure she was asleep before he pulled away and climbed out of bed. He paused for a moment, watching her as she stretched out and then curled back into the foetal position, one hand fisted beside her head.   
  
His chest clenched in a way that, by now, had become very familiar, and he turned away.

 

 


	66. Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery time continues. 
> 
> Very faintly, in the distance, Hancock yells "FUCKING FINALLY"

He read through her collection of magazines until he heard her stirring. The sight of her waking — rumpled, drowsy, her hair a mess — almost overcame him. He crawled onto the bed beside her and kissed her until she was breathless, and then he pushed her back onto the mattress and fucked her slow. Afterwards she lingered in bed with him, naked and relaxed, flicking through one of the magazines. The pleasant post-sex lethargy pushed the darkness back into the corner of his mind, and lying with her on her bed he was able to admire her in a way he couldn’t when he was caught up in his need for her. He indulged himself in it.   
  
He hadn’t paid much attention, before, to the silver stretch marks that ran over the curves of her hips. They were the sort of thing that would never be visible on a ghoul, and now he looked at them he found them fascinating, tracing the length of them with his fingers. And there were scars, faint things he had never noticed before. There was the small scar on her knee, from climbing over a barbed wire fence, long ago, but there was also a line on the side of her ankle, maybe a scratch from a plant or nail she hadn’t bothered to waste a stim on. Another pale line on one shoulder, thin, and a mole, low on her back, dark brown and perfectly round. And, very faint, a scar on her left arm, just below her elbow. From an ambush in Alaska, the remnants of a wound left just a little too long for a stimpak to heal her completely.  
  
He finally let his eyes wander up the curve of her long legs to the knot of curls between them, and without really knowing what he was doing or why he reached over to wrap one of the curls around his pinky finger.  
  
She laughed. “You don’t want me to shave, then?”  
  
“Ghoul women don’t tend to have any,” he said with a lop-sided smile.  
  
“Ha! Oh my god, I’d never thought about that.”  
  
He let the curl unravel from around his finger, and trailed his hand up the curve of her hip, rubbing at the bruises he had given her the night before. At some point he would need to train himself to be more careful with her. She didn’t seem to mind bruises, but he couldn’t leave her black and blue every time they fucked. It wasn’t fair.  
  
“Should I have done that?” he asked, and grimaced. “Last night, when we got back… I shouldn’t have… _taken_ you, like that. I was rough. Possessive.”  
  
“Possessive can be a lot of fun. You don’t need to worry about that, Charon. If it had bothered me I would have asked you to slow down, or something.” She put a hand to his jaw, lifting his chin so he met her eyes. “Love. I know that was… important. It was for me, too. I missed you. I needed you.”  
  
He reached up to cup her cheek, tracing the tip of his thumb along her bottom lip.  
  
“You needed me?” he murmured, and leant forward to kiss her on the forehead.  
  
“Does that surprise you?”  
  
“A little,” he admitted. “I know you care, smoothskin, but you cannot possibly… I am not someone people _need_.” He smirked at her. “If you were being overrun by ferals, perhaps. Besides, you were not alone without me.”  
  
“Charon, come on.”   
  
She huffed a sigh of frustration and pushed herself up off the bed, frowning, turning away. He sat up, his bad leg outstretched, and reached for her. She shrugged him off.  
  
“Beauty, understand…”  
  
“You mean a lot to me,” she interrupted, turning back to him. “You’re — the people I love aren’t just — just interchangeable. I don’t need you _less_ because I have Hancock. You’re not my fallback, Charon, and nor is he. I love _you_. The person you are. Not just your cock or your shotgun or whatever the fuck you think I keep you around for.” She grimaced, and looked away. “You’re a person worth knowing. I _told_ you that. You think I’m wrong?”  
  
“ _Yes,_ you’re wrong.” He held his hands helplessly out to his sides. “You built this up in your mind, you made me into who you wanted me to be. I am not _good,_ I’m not — I’m not _special._ I’m not strong. I’m not who you want me to be.” He took a deep breath, biting back on a burst of frustration and anger. “I _like_ that you think I am these things. But you’re wrong.”  
  
“And what about me?”  
  
He paused. “What?”  
  
“You think I’m _good._ That I’m this — this _angel_ sent forward through time.” She shook her head. “You’ve put a halo on my head because I do something other than torment you and treat you like shit. I’m not special, Charon. I’m a fucking lawyer! I’m just trying to get by and make the people I love smile. That’s it.”  
  
“That’s _it?_ ” he spat out, almost snarling at her. “ _Wake up._ You walk around with these rose-tinted fucking glasses. This isn’t the same place as before the war. Do you know how fucking rare it is to find a goddamn _decent person?_ ”  
  
“I’ve found _plenty!_ I’ve found people who risked their lives to save others, to save people everyone else feared and hated and tore to pieces in the streets. I’ve found people who saw an ignorant vault dweller and instead of robbing her and beating her and leaving her in a ditch they fucking _helped her_ do all the stupid shit she does. I found _you,_ a man who’s lived through hells beyond counting and still feels sorrow when something bad happens to someone else.”  
  
Charon was sorry he’d started this argument. The flash of anger he’d felt had been brief and now he wanted to hold her.  
  
He sighed. “Sloan…”  
  
“Oh, there are bad people in the wasteland? I hadn’t noticed! I mean I only just killed about _fifty_ of the fuckers out in the middle of _goddamn nowhere_ to find you.”  
  
“That,” he said, seizing on it. “That’s why. That’s why I think you are _good_. No one else would have come for me. _No one else_. Only you.”  
  
“See, that’s what you don’t understand. _They would have._ If I was dead — _when_ I am dead — they will still fucking come for you. Hancock and Nick and MacCready will come for you. Deacon, Fahrenheit. People you haven’t even _met_ would come for you. Because they’re good people, and you are worth saving. All right? It’s not just me. I’m not deluded. You’re worth the air you breathe and the food you eat and the blood, sweat and fucking tears it might take to get you back again.”  
  
“I am not strong, mistress,” he said again. “I am _weak_. Stupid. Those fucking men you killed caught me unprepared. I let them take me from you. I left you alone, you were sick and you were sleeping and I _left you_. I was — I was distracted by my _feelings_ for you and I didn’t notice we were being tailed. You bled and sweat and cried and _I am to blame_. So do not tell me what I am worth.”  
  
“You are _not_ — god, Charon, _they_ are to blame!”   
  
She sighed, and rubbed at her face with both hands. Her eyes were wet, and Charon felt a lump rising in his throat.   
  
“Charon,” she said, and shifted forward, sliding her arms around his neck. “This wasn’t your fault. You didn’t leave me, you were _taken_. I know you wouldn’t leave me.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” he said, his mouth dry. “B-but I should have seen them. I should have known. If they had attacked us both, while I was distracted and you were asleep… I could have lost you, you could have been _killed_. Because of _me_.” He turned his head to rest his temple against her hair. “I cannot deal with that.”  
  
“And where am I in all this? I don’t have a responsibility?” She huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “I was trained to have a sharp eye, to see details. Where the hell was I? Why didn’t I see them?”  
  
“You were… Mistress, it isn’t your responsibility to…”  
  
“Of course it is.” She pulled back a little, and made a face. “You don’t think I should be proactive about my own safety? In the wasteland?”  
  
“I look after you,” he murmured, rubbing his hand across the small of her back. “I _like_ that you are tough, that you can take care of yourself. But I protect you. That is my purpose. And I like… I like being in your service. Understand? You are my beauty, you belong to me. I have never _wanted_ to protect an employer before. Not like this.” He cleared his throat, a quiet rumbling noise. “I know you are not a porcelain doll. You will not break if I am not there. Still… you are precious. All humans are delicate, and you…”  
  
“We look after _each other,_ Charon.” Sloan sighed. “I worry sometimes that you put me on a pedestal. Think that I’m… flawless, or something. Better than I am.”  
  
He chuckled despite himself.   
  
“The mistress wants a list of her flaws? She talks too much, she does not check her emotions, she is _stubborn_ and foolish and takes too many risks…”  
  
“All right…”  
  
“…She blows things up for _fun,_ she takes too many chems, she makes friends with the wrong sort of person, she —”  
  
“All _right!_ ” She laughed, and pressed a firm kiss to his cheek. “Fine, you see me as an irresponsible maniac who has to be restrained lest she run into a Gunner camp with a mini-nuke like a super mutant suicider. I am a deeply flawed human being.”  
  
“And I love you.”  
  
She hummed her pleasure, and nuzzled against his neck.  
  
“I love you too. And it upsets me when you blame yourself for what other people did to you. I wish you’d let go of the guilt. I’m safe. It wasn’t your fault, Charon. Okay?”  
  
He swallowed, and nodded.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“And I _did_ need you. Last night when we got back, I needed you. I needed you to touch me and fuck me and remind me that you’re _here_. That I got you back. That we’re both safe and alive and together. You understand me?” She raised a hand to his cheek, stroking her thumb along a tear in his skin. “You’re not just… I didn’t just need _ghoul cock,_ all right?” She gave him a rueful smile. “Are you going to tell me you just needed a woman? That anyone would have —”  
  
“It wasn’t —” He grimaced. “No. It wasn’t the sex, beauty. I didn’t need a _fuck,_ I needed _you_. The sex was — was just —” He grasped for words, his eyes wandering around the room. “I needed to be close to you. Inside you. Touching every part of you.”  
  
“And you don’t think I have the capacity to love like that?”  
  
He swore. “Of _course_ you do, just…” He hesitated, swallowing again against the tightness in his throat that would not go away.  
  
“…Just not you.”   
  
There was a trace of amusement on her face, and he felt, then, monumentally stupid. She had come to get him, to save him, and he had _known she would_. He had told the voice in the darkness that she would come. Because she loved him. She loved him.   
  
So why wouldn’t he _let_ her? What was wrong with him that he _knew_ she loved him and still, _still_ there was a part of him that didn’t believe it? He could accept that she loved him only if that love was limited?  
  
“What is wrong with me?” he muttered.   
  
“Oh, sweetheart.” She giggled softly, sitting back on her heels. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve been doing pretty well for someone who can’t remember ever doing this shit before.”  
  
Charon shook his head. There was an anger building in his chest, and his eyes started to sting. It was bad enough he’d been through centuries of what amounted to enslavement. Those people, those monsters he had called _master,_ they had reached inside his head and told him that there was nothing about him worthy of anything. That every punishment, every hideous duty, was something he had somehow earned, and every smile turned his way was something he had stolen. And they had made him believe it.  
  
“Fuck,” he said aloud.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“They _broke_ me,” he growled. “They broke my head! They told me I was _nothing,_ and _I believed them_.”  
  
She said something, reaching out to stroke her hand down his arm, but he shook his head, ignoring her.  
  
“No, this — this is why Hancock was angry. They told me I was _nothing,_ they — they told me I sh-shouldn’t feel pain or show weakness, that I shouldn’t — that I shouldn’t feel _anything_. This is why he is so angry all the time. Angry at _me_ for fucking _believing_ them. When he told me I should be fighting I thought — I thought he meant the orders, but he meant _this_. They told me I was nothing and instead of fighting I _believed them. Fuck._ ”  
  
He screwed his face upand pushed his hands back through his hair, raking his remaining nails across his scalp. His eyes were still stinging, and he squeezed them shut. He didn’t want tears. He was too angry for tears.   
  
“Charon.”  
  
He took a shaking breath, and opened his eyes. Sloan was watching him, eyebrows were pinched together, concern lining her face. But, as always, she was a touchstone.  
  
“You’re not nothing,” she said slowly.   
  
“No,” he rasped, his hands falling to his lap. “No. I’m not nothing.”  
  
“You’ve never been nothing. You’ve always been yourself. Stuck in a life you can’t control, but always a person, Charon. Always.”   
  
“I’m not sure,” he said haltingly. “There were times… you understand? I have not always been myself. Not always. I closed myself off. I have no idea who I used to be before all this began. I made myself hard so they couldn’t touch me, so I could do the things they told me to do. I lost my memories, I…” He trailed off, and took a deep breath.  
  
“I know,” she said, her voice soft. “But even if you put on your mental armour and never took it off, you’d still be a person. And I’d still love that person.”  
  
He scoffed at that, but he felt a soft throb in his chest, and leant forward to graze his lips against her forehead.  
  
She tilted her face up, the way she’d done nearly two months ago in a camp full of dead raiders, and he kissed her as he had then, slow, one hand cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing along her scar. She pulled him down onto the bed with her, curling one leg around his, her gentle hands caressing down his side. He let her soothe him, let himself feel every touch and kiss as something he deserved. It was strange, and a little thrilling, like taking advantage of a poorly-phrased order to do something he knew an employer would not want. They could fuck themselves, those past masters. He had _her_ now. She was his, and he was hers.  
  
And one day when she was dead, and his contract had passed on to someone who was hateful and cruel… Perhaps he would become hard again. Perhaps he would shut himself off, and believe that he was nothing, just so he could survive. But he would remember that, for a while, he had been hers. He had been more than nothing. And perhaps that would be enough.   
  
He shifted onto his side and bent his head to press a kiss against her shoulder.  
  
“I think I need to talk to Hancock,” he said.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yes. He was right. I should tell him that.” He let his hand drift down her belly, and slid his fingers through her pubic hair.   
  
She squirmed as if it tickled, giggling.  
  
“So… do you want me to shave, or…?”  
  
He looked up at her in surprise, and growled a little at the back of his throat.   
  
“Smoothskin, don’t you _dare_.”  
  
She grinned at him. “You’ll have to tell me all the things you enjoy. Games, outfits… I think we’ll have a hard time finding something like a nurse’s uniform but I have this Grognak the Barbarian costume somewhere. You know, strategically ripped shirt, loin cloth, big boots.”  
  
“Why,” he asked, “would I want you to put clothes _on?_ ”  
  
“Is this a ghoul thing? Demanding nakedness?”  
  
“Maybe,” Charon allowed. “We are all torn and scarred. Would it surprise you if we enjoy seeing your perfect human skin?” He kissed her shoulder again, sliding his hand up along her side.    
  
“No. It’s just fun, once in a while. Plus, if I put something on, then you get to take it off again.”  
  
He smirked at that, and brushed a finger along the underside of her breast.   
  
“I would like to be in charge some time,” he admitted. “If it is allowed. But I do not know how it’s done.”  
  
“You’ll get the hang of it,” she said with a soft smile.   
  
“You would not mind being submissive?”  
  
“You need to ask? I _love_ it. You can dominate me all you want.”  
  
He kissed her neck. “You don’t want a turn?”  
  
Her expression softened. “Yes. Eventually. I’m not sure you’re in the right headspace for it right now. You had a chain around your neck a week ago, I’m not going to go collaring you again just yet. It’ll mess up your head.”   
  
“There are always chains,” he said.   
  
“I know, love. Still.”  
  
“You are kind to me,” he said, and brushed the back of a finger across her cheek.   
  
She smiled, but there was a soft melancholy underneath, and he searched for something to say to make her smile brighter.   
  
An idea occurred.   
  
“You will wear things for me?” he asked her.  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“Then… I have thought of something.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“I would like you to wear the vault suit.”  
  
Her face broke into a grin of delight, and she laughed to herself.  
  
“Can I ask why?” she said.  
  
He shrugged a shoulder. “Vault dwellers… they are crazy, but they are also… soft. Innocent.”  
  
“Ohhh. I get it.” She smirked. “People have vault-dweller fantasies, out here in the wasteland?…I know where I could get more vault suits. We could sell ‘em, to people that way inclined.”  
  
“I don’t know. I do not ask other people’s fantasies.” He let his eyes wander down the curve of her waist, her hip. “I like the way it… clings… to you. You are different, when you wear it. I look at you differently. I don’t know why.”  
  
“That sounds like fun. I’ll be the innocent, sheltered little vault dweller, and you can be the big scary ghoul who… educates me in the ways of the world.”   
  
He growled in approval, and she laughed softly.  
  
“In fact, I’ll wear one of the extras I found and we can rip some strategic holes in it.” Her grin widened. “So strategic, we’ll put history’s greatest generals to shame.”  
  
He let out a bark of laughter, and tickled her under her ribs until she shrieked.   
  
How did she do that? How did she make him smile and laugh when moments before he had been picking over centuries of angst? The light in her eyes was a _joy,_ and there had been, until now, nothing approaching that in his life.  
  
She would have made a good mother, he realised. Playful and kind, and more patient than she had any right to be. A sad thing, that she would never be one now. But he couldn’t blame her for that choice. The wasteland was no place to raise a child.  
  
“Your face has gone sad,” she said softly.  
  
“I was just… no. Nothing important.”  
  
She nudged his thigh with her foot, and he rolled his eyes.  
  
“You want to know so badly, smoothskin?”  
  
“Not if you don’t want to tell it.”  
  
He sighed. A lock of her hair had fallen across her face, and he brushed it away.  
  
“You would have been a good mother,” he said.  
  
He expected the melancholy in her eyes, but not her smile.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 200,000 words! *confetti*


	67. Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternative title: Blood

  
  
He could tell that he was using sex as a way to avoid dealing with the shit in his head, and that eventually they would have to surface from their bubble of warmth and pleasure. He knew that when they did, it would be waiting for him. Right now, he chose not to care.   
  
Sloan was stretched out on the bed, naked and half-asleep. She had worn the silver dress, just to drive him crazy, and he’d pushed her up against the wall and fucked her senseless. Then he’d stripped it off her, pushed her back onto the bed, and ate her out until she was exhausted, trembling and shining with sweat. Discovering more ways to pleasure her, making her squirm and cry out in ecstasy — it was more than satisfying. If it weren’t for the shadows lurking in the corners of his mind, it would have been fulfilling. As it was…  
  
She must know there was more to it than just lust. More to it than just ignoring his angst, even… He was trying to reclaim her, reclaim himself. Reclaim his manhood, maybe, his body. If he told her that she’d call him ridiculous, but she must know what he was doing. This sex was desperate. It was dirty and frantic and violent. He had bruised her enough at one point that he’d asked her to take a stimpak, knowing he’d hate himself for it later if she didn’t. He’d popped the stitches on his chest and hadn’t cared, pain and pleasure coiling together, and afterwards he’d licked his blood off her skin and kissed her with the copper taste still on his tongue. He was tearing himself apart, and he didn’t care. He wanted it that way. He was _alive,_ and she was screaming his name.  
  
He slid his hand over the curve of her ass, squeezing gently, and she screwed up her face.  
  
“Mrff. Some of us need _sleep,_ Charon.”  
  
“It is boring when you sleep.”  
  
She opened one eye, and she looked so exhausted that he felt a stab of guilt.   
  
“Sorry, beauty,” he said, sitting up.  
  
“Not that I don’t enjoy it, but goddamn. A girl needs to rest.”  
  
He ran a hand back through his hair, and growled softly to himself. “Sloan…Damn it, woman. Why do you let me do this?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
She pushed herself up off the bed, looking up at him with confusion in her eyes.  
  
“Look at what I have been _doing_ to you,” he said. “You have to beg me to let you _sleep_. I have been… I can’t…” He grimaced in frustration. “Beauty, I will take _everything_ you offer me, and more. I am not fool enough to turn you down.”  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She studied his face, and reached out to rest her hand against the side of his neck. “I’m not going to _break,_ Charon. I’m just tired, that’s all. What is it that makes you think I’m not enjoying this every bit as much as you are?”  
  
He had no answer for her. She loved him, for the person he was, and yet he couldn't let himself forget the fact that she was a human, and he was a ghoul. There was no way to put into words how monstrous he sometimes felt with her, like something from a horror flick dragging her back to its lair. He knew she enjoyed it, _made sure_ she enjoyed it, but there were times when each moment of pleasure he took from her still felt stolen. _Illicit_. Like being with her was a crime. Here, in Diamond City, it might be.  
  
There had been times in the last few days when that idea had turned him on, had fuelled the passion behind every kiss, every thrust. Now it just felt perverse. Depraved. The hideous ghoul despoiling the beautiful human.   
  
That was _wrong,_ and he knew it was wrong. She loved him, she wanted him. So why did he feel this way? Was it just the ancient threats of employers who did not like where his eyes lingered?  
  
He had no memory of ever forcing himself on a woman. The idea repulsed him. But the way he had been losing himself in her since they’d been back… It was starting to worry him. This was something _in him,_ something selfish and hungry and cruel. It was possible, somewhere in the forgotten past, that he had hurt some woman on an employer’s orders, or even of his own accord. Heard them scream.   
  
“This runs pretty deep, huh?” she said softly.  
  
He met her hazel eyes, and lifted a hand absently to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear.  
  
“I don’t know what it is,” he told her. “Maybe something that I cannot remember.” He hesitated. “There used to be flicks… about… about monsters stealing women.”  
  
She blinked at him. “You mean like King Kong? The Creature from the Black Lagoon, that sort of thing?”  
  
He nodded. “Yes, like that. I am a lagoon creature.”  
  
She stared at him for a moment, and then snorted a laugh and pressed her forehead against his uninjured shoulder.  
  
“This is funny?”  
  
“Oh, sweetling.” She turned her head to smile up at him. “Half of those movies are about how humanity is cruel to outsiders. The monster’s always some poor sap driven to extremes by the hatred of others. Like the Phantom of the Opera. He had his own monster flick and everything.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Although I suppose, if anything, it makes the metaphor more apt. So many people are awful to ghouls.” She pushed herself up onto her knees and slung her arms around his neck, bending her head to kiss his collarbone. “Just think of me as the strange girl who doesn’t mind being thrown over the creature’s back and carried off to be ravaged. Beauty always falls in love with the beast at the end of the story, remember.”  
  
He almost laughed at himself. Beauty and the fucking beast.   
  
“I am your beast?” he asked her. He bent to brush his lips against her hair, one hand stroking up her back.  
  
“You certainly are.”  
  
“You know, that had not even occurred to me. Beauty and the beast.”  
  
“Really? I thought maybe that was part of the reason you called me that.”  
  
“I had forgotten that fairy tale.” He straightened, pulling back just a little so that he could see her face. “I will not turn into a human at the end if you love me enough,” he warned her, brushing the tip of a finger down her cheek.  
  
“Have you ever watched a Beauty and the Beast flick?” she asked, tracing a finger along the edge of one of his scars, her head on his shoulder. “I never knew anyone who wasn’t a little bit disappointed when he turned back into a human at the end.”  
  
“He did not look like a ghoul, I would bet.”  
  
“No. But still. I’m saying there are more than enough women in the world who want a bit of beast in their lives.” She kissed his throat, and then closed her teeth gently over his skin. “You can always count on a beast for a hard, ruthless fuck.”  
  
Charon was about to disagree with her until he remembered a young woman, too thin, in the alleyways of Goodneighbor.  
  
“There was a girl,” he said thoughtfully. “In Goodneighbor. She… propositioned me. I think that was what she wanted.”  
  
There was a spark in Sloan’s eyes. “And? Did you nail her to a wall?”  
  
He scoffed. “Of course not. You were missing. I was afraid for you.”  
  
“She would have been a good distraction, then.” She reached down to run her hand up his thigh, her touch feather-light, teasing. “What _would_ you have done? Teach her not to let big ghouls have their way with her? Would you have tied her up and fucked her sweet little cunt?”  
  
“This gets you off,” he accused her, and she grinned.  
  
“You could do it to me,” she said. “Teach me a lesson for asking for things I’m not ready for…”  
  
“This _does_ get you off.” He growled, and grabbed her ass, fingers pressing into her skin. “You may regret that.”  
  
Even he wasn’t sure whether that was a warning or a promise. If she wanted domination… he might not know what he was doing, but he was willing to experiment.   
  
But then she laughed, and he remembered she was tired, and probably sore, and he took her hand and lifted it to press a kiss against the smooth skin on the inside of her wrist.  
  
“I _am_ sorry,” he murmured. “All of this… I have been trying to bury myself in you. Bury the… the fear, the pain. The first night I just needed you, to connect with you, but since then… You have given me anything I have asked for from the moment that door closed. Beauty, I’ve been selfish.”  
  
“You have been _healing,_ ” she corrected him.   
  
“And you have let me.” He kissed the side of her neck. “Generous mistress.”   
  
She giggled to herself. “Charon, you’re such a doofus. As if I didn’t get as much out of it as you do. Probably more.”  
  
“Five minutes ago you were asking me to let you sleep, and now you want… What?” He pulled away, and shook his head. “I scold you because you have not been sleeping enough, and then I keep you awake. Selfish.” He gave her a gentle tap on the hip. “Go back to bed, smoothskin.”  
  
She chewed the inside of her lip, but she nodded, and crawled under the covers.   
  
“I wish _you_ would get some sleep,” she told him, pulling a pillow off the mattress behind her and picking at the pillowcase with anxious fingers. “I feel like you’re running on fumes.”  
  
“I have been eating,” he reminded her. There had been only scraps in the bunker, and those if he was lucky. The last few days had been a process of rebuilding himself in more ways than one.   
  
“Yeah, and then burning it off again. All that cardio…”  
  
He chuckled. “Cardio?”  
  
“I mean it’s not like you’ve been taking it easy.”  
  
That was true.   
  
“If it will make you happy,” he said, “I will rest.”  
  
“…Really?”  
  
He nodded, and clambered across the bed to slide under the covers beside her.   
  
“Perhaps I will not _sleep,_ ” he said, laying his head on the pillow, “but I will rest.”  
  
There was always the risk, with her, that he would find himself lulled to sleep by the rhythm of her breathing, the comfort of her warmth beside him. But he would have to sleep eventually, like it or not, and he may as well do it here, the safest place he knew.  
  
“I’ll take what I can get,” she said with a yawn, and burrowed down under the covers.   
  
“Will you wake me, if…?”  
  
“Of course I will.”  
  
He shifted closer to her, reaching over to wind an arm around her waist. She rolled onto her side and pressed her back against his chest, her fingers tangling with his, and Charon wondered why he hadn’t held her quite like this before. This was _perfect._   
  
“Love you,” he told her, burying his face in her hair. She had let him wash it, standing naked with her under her cold shower, and now she smelt of coconut and vanilla. The scent took him back to the last time she had washed it, months ago, back before the Slog and the deathclaw that had almost killed her.   
  
“Love you too,” she murmured, tightening her hand around his.  
  
This time, when she fell asleep, he stayed where he was. It was too warm here, too comfortable, and _god_ he needed the fucking rest. She was right. He’d been fighting it, but now, lying here with his arm around her… he needed to turn his mind off, just for a little while. Sex was a good distraction, but a part of him needed the soft, layered silence of lying in bed with her, and closing his eyes, and letting the feeling of safety settle onto him.  
  
When he finally did sleep, he didn’t find himself alone in the dark.  
  
It was a maze. The lights were flickering, fluorescent bulbs blinking on and off, throwing long shadows down the halls. The walls were white, and that was _wrong_ in a way that touched on some buried horror in his mind. But there was no time to wonder what it was or why it repulsed him, because the mistress was in danger.  
  
He couldn’t see her. She was somewhere up ahead, lost, but he _knew_ she was in danger, because she was screaming.  
  
He ran down the darkened hallways, hopeless, desperate. There were too many corners, too many forks in his path. He was lost and he could not find her, he didn’t seem to be getting any closer. There was terror in her voice, and pain, and though there was no contract thrumming in his nerves he was nearly mad with fear.  
  
And when he rounded the corner and saw her — finally saw her, scrabbling up against the wall — he realised what she was running from.   
  
It was him.  
  
He saw himself as if from the outside, distant. Mad — feral — he reached for her, and she didn’t run. There was nowhere left to go. She turned to face him, her eyes wide, and he watched himself tear her apart.   
  
He clawed at her face, tearing her skin, ripping new scars in her cheeks. She didn’t fight him. Instead she looked at him, stared up at him with sad, sad eyes. Impassive. Fatalistic.  
  
 _Fight me,_ he pleaded with her. _Fight me, please. Shoot me, kill me. Sloan, Sloan, why aren’t you fighting?_  
  
Her flesh parted under his hands and he dug into her chest, breaking through her ribs to crush her heart. He tore it from her, blood running down his arms.   
  
She reached for him, tears of blood streaming down her cheeks.  
  
“ _Charon… Please…_ ”  
  
He woke with a shout, panicking, fighting with the sheets. Sloan made a soft, sleepy sound in the bed next to him, and he started as he felt her hand close around his wrist. He lurched away, fell off the bed as he tried to get away from her.   
  
“Charon. Mmf. What’s wrong? You have a bad dream?”  
  
“I couldn’t save you,” he said, struggling to his feet. “I couldn’t find you, I couldn’t save you.”  
  
“S’okay, love.” She pushed herself up and reached for him, and he backed away. “I’m safe,” she said.”We’re both safe.”  
  
“I c-couldn’t — I —”  
  
“Charon, I’m here. Right here. It’s okay, sweetling, it was a dream.”  
  
“N-no,” he said. “No, I’m sorry, I —”  
  
“You don’t need to be sorry, love. You always save me.”   
  
He shook his head, stepping back as she moved towards him.  
  
“Charon? Charon, it’s me. You’re safe.”  
  
She slipped off the bed, and the breath caught in his chest. He panicked, running for the far wall, turning his face towards it as if by not looking at her he could somehow avoid her notice. He reached up to dig his fingers into his scalp. There weren’t enough places to hide in this _fucking house._  
  
He caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and started.  
  
“No — don’t touch me, don’t —”  
  
“I won’t touch you. I won’t touch you. It’s okay. I’ll stay right over here.” She waited until he nodded, a little of his fear ebbing away. “Will you tell me what happened?”  
  
“Just — just a dream,” he said, aware of how pathetic that sounded. How goddamn unlikely, when he’d _run_ from her just a moment ago.  
  
“Just a dream?”  
  
“N-not a memory,” he said. “Not — Nothing that has happened yet.”  
  
She circled around him to see his face, and he jolted away from her, his hands behind his back.  
  
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not coming any closer, I just… just wanted to see you. That’s all.” She was silent a moment. “Did I die?”  
  
His head snapped up and he met her eyes.   
  
“You said it hadn’t happened _yet,_ ” she said with a small smile.  
  
He swallowed. “N-no. You were alive, but… you should not have been. I killed you. I w-went f-feral and I killed you. You — I heard you screaming and I tried to find you, you were running, you were running from _me,_ you were running from me and I found you, I k-killed you. I r-ripped your _heart_ out.”  
  
“You’re not going to catch me, Charon, okay? I promise you, you go feral and you won’t even see me. I’ll be gone so damn fast.”   
  
She gave him a soft, self-deprecating sort of smile, and Charon exhaled a shaking breath.  
  
“You have to promise,” he said.  
  
“I promise.” She reached a hand out to him. “I promise. I swear to you on my brother’s grave, if you turn feral, you will _never_ catch me.”  
  
He nodded slowly, and let his hands drop to his sides. He believed her. But he couldn’t touch her. Not yet.   
  
He wouldn’t follow her back to bed. He stayed on the other side of the room, taking a seat on the end of her weights bench and staring through her open curtains as she climbed back under the covers.   
  
She needed her sleep and all he did was disturb her. No more.   
  
It was a long time before her breathing evened out, and he guessed she had fallen asleep. He ducked his head, squeezing his eyes tight against tears and failing.    
  
He’d expected to dream about the bunker, the darkness, maybe the King with a bullet in his eye. Not this. Not failing her, betraying her. _Killing_ her. All he wanted was to _rest,_ to curl up with her in the safety and warmth of her home and sleep until the bunker was a distant memory. And he couldn’t. Even here, he couldn’t sleep.   
  
_Fuck._   
  
Physically he could go for weeks yet before he needed rest. But mentally, emotionally? He was exhausted. He was _safe_ here, or safe enough, and even if he didn’t sleep he wanted to lie beside her in her oversized bed and just _rest_. Just lie there in her little nest of blankets and — and be warm and safe and quiet. Just for a while.   
  
And he couldn’t. It was too easy to fall asleep beside her.   
  
He grimaced, and wiped at his cheeks. He was not used to crying. Crying was weakness, it was foolishness. It solved nothing.  
  
A small sound made him raise his head, and his throat dried up.   
  
Sloan was standing a few paces in front of him, her face tired, and sad. She took a step forward, reached over to settle her fingertips on his cheek, and wiped away a tear.  
  
“My poor love,” she said softly.  
  
“I… I’m…”   
  
“It’s okay,” she said, crouching down at his feet. “You can cry all you want. That’s what we’re here for, Charon.”  
  
He choked back a sob and balled his hands into fists. He desperately wanted to gather her up and hold her close, but the idea if putting his hands on her now, with those images still in his head… His gut churned.  
  
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasped.  
  
“I know.”  
  
He’d expected another _you can’t hurt me,_ a reminder that she was safe with him, and when he didn’t get it he looked down at her in surprise. She was watching him with those large hazel eyes of hers, solemn and patient. Always so patient.  
  
He cleared his throat, and unclenched his fists to rub his palms together.  
  
“I don’t know why I dreamt that,” he said. “After… after the bunker, I thought…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“…That I’d dream of… of those people, that place. The dark. Not… not… I was running after you. I couldn’t find you and I was… so afraid. You were screaming. Scared, hurt. I don’t want that, Sloan, I don’t. I couldn’t find you and it was killing me. But then I _did,_ I did find you. I turned a corner and you were there, and… and it was _me_ you were afraid of. _Me_. There was nowhere left to run. I was trying to find you to save you, to protect you, and instead I r-ripped your face off. And you didn’t f-fight me.” He swallowed, and wiped his hands across his face. “ _Why did I dream that?_ ”  
  
“I don’t know.” She shifted, sitting down on the floor beside him and letting her eyes wander up over her shelves. “Maybe it has something to do with the way they took you.”  
  
“I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he mumbled. “They wouldn’t tell me. They could have hurt you, raped you. Or a fucking yao-guai could have come along and eaten you. I shouldn’t have —”  
  
“Charon. I’m fine. You know I’m fine.”  
  
“I know that. _Now_ I know that. But then I — I didn’t. I worried.”  
  
“It might not be about that, anyway,” she said. “Maybe you want to think about something else so bad that your brain’s throwing up anything awful it can come up with, just to distract you.”  
  
“I hate it.” He grimaced. “I would rather dream about the bunker.”  
  
They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Sloan shifted, pulling her knees up to her chest.  
  
“I have bad dreams,” she said.  
  
“Tonight?” Charon asked her.  
  
“No. Not tonight. But other nights. When we were on the road, coming back here. Bad dreams.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About the bunker. Finding you too late, or you’re dead but you’re not dead, you’re still in there. Cold and rotting and crawling with maggots, but you’re still in there.” She stared ahead of herself, her throat moving as she swallowed. “Or we go to Bethany’s place and she’s not there. Or I ask her to cut the names off’ve you and she cuts too much, a-and you’re… bleeding. Trying to hold your skin together. Trying to stop the blood. There’s always so much blood.”  
  
He reached down to stroke a hand through her hair, and she looked up, her face softening into a sad smile.  
  
“Honestly, that was such a stupid thing to do. If they hadn’t healed up properly you’d have been _covered_ in gashes. I think the rad poisoning made me a bit loopy, that and the dregs of the psycho. But I couldn’t make you walk around the rest of your life covered in people’s names, and those horrible fucking words. I just couldn’t.”  
   
He felt a soft throb in his chest, and he tugged on her hair.  
  
“Come here,” he said, and she stood, moved around to face him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close, his cheek resting against her chest. “You did that for me. I am not sure I could have done that, for you. Even without the contract.”   
  
“You would have.”  
  
“I don’t like to think about you bleeding. When that deathclaw got you…” He closed his eyes. “I still think about that. How you were covered in blood after. I couldn’t get it off my hands.” He took a shaking breath. “In Goodneighbor, when I thought you were missing. I had a dream then.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“There were holes in your throat, holes, like Valentine. I put my hands on you, through the holes. I crushed your veins and arteries and the blood… the blood ran down my arms.”  
  
She stroked her fingers gently through his hair.  
  
“It’s okay, love. I’m here. It’s okay.”  
  
Something cracked in his chest, and he turned his head to press his face into her shirt, his shoulders shaking as he cried.  
  
“You’re mine,” he said, his voice muffled. “I take care of you; I’d never hurt you.”  
  
“I know that, love. I know.”  
  
“Never, even if I _could._ ”  
  
“I know.”  
  
She held him until there was nothing left in him, and then she took his hand, and led him back to bed.  
  


 

 


	68. Lantern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Different ways of coping

At last Sloan seemed to have decided that he had broken as much as he was going to.  
  
The point of staying here had always been to hunker down and let him break. For all he’d hated the idea, had every intention of stoicism, that was more or less what he’d done. He’d held her and he’d cried and then he had felt… empty.  
  
He wasn’t sure if that was better. He didn’t know what to do with _empty._ At the Ninth Circle he had been empty, but it was an emptiness derived from boredom and the dullness of quiet hatred. This, all of this, was entirely different, and he didn’t know what to do with any of it. He hadn’t spoken about the bunker, hadn’t laid it out in front of her the way he’d expected her to want. But nor had he pushed it down and allowed it to rot. Another time, another employer, the wounds would have been ignored. They would have scabbed over, healed ugly and twisted like a ghoul’s skin. They hadn’t healed yet, but maybe when they did, he could think about them without that sense of horror and fear that pervaded so much of his past.  
  
True to her word, she had not pushed him. She’d simply sat with him, quiet and reassuring, and let him pour out his bullshit into her lap. Now and then, when she was sleeping and he was sitting on the landing with a book, he thought back over those moments of weakness and ground his teeth in irritation. The worst part of it all was that it had _helped_. He resented that. Any other time he would have clamped down on any expression of emotion simply to protect himself, let the anger and pain and self-hatred eat him from the inside. Repression and denial were what he had always done to survive and it smarted that something that made him feel so pathetic and weak was what he’d needed.  
  
So, yes. He had been soft. But he would have to admit — grudgingly — that Valentine was right. There were worse things to be.  
  
They stayed for five full days. He didn’t sleep again, not after the nightmare, but he had laid beside her with his eyes closed, and thought of small and unimportant things. He thought of the night sky, tried to recreate the position of each star. He thought of long days at the Ninth Circle, and wondered who had cleaned up the mess Ahzrukhal’s brains had made on the back of the bar. He thought of the Wanderer, solemn and quiet, so different from Sloan — except for those moments late at night or just before dawn, when she was thinking of a world that no longer existed.  
  
It was important to stay distracted. When he didn’t feel like resting, he kept himself busy. Sloan had a large number of guns she didn’t use, mostly heavy weapons, and he cleaned every one. He found her railroad gun, the one she called the spike-thrower, and smiled to himself as he rubbed a cloth along the scarred metal. It had been a deeply entertaining gun to use. A shame it was so noisy and cumbersome. He had only ever see her use it the once. Another gun gave him pause: small, strange, red and chrome, shaped like an insect. It sat with a pile of strange ammo on its shelf, and after examining it for a while as he tried to work out how to take it apart, he gave up, and put it back where he had found it.  
  
He kept his mind on anything but the bunker. Even the thought of it afterwards, littered with bodies… He wanted to put it behind him.  
  
The thoughts came anyway, repeatedly, flashing into his mind without warning. Images, sensations. The shine of blood on the yao-guai’s teeth, the cold of the cement floor, the smiling face of the king at the worst possible fucking moment. To start with he pushed them away, forced them down into the hidden depths of his mind where all such demons lurked. But they returned, again and again, like ice cubes bobbing to the top of a glass.  
  
On the evening of the fifth day, when the thoughts plagued him constantly, he swallowed his pride and asked for her help.  
  
“Come with me,” she said.  
  
She took him up to the roof, and lit a lantern. Then she sat on the couch, her legs folded under her, and rested her hands in her lap.  
  
“What are we doing?” He settled on the couch beside her, trying to ape her posture. His legs were too long to cross properly on the couch, and after a moment he gave up.  
  
“You know that thing you do, when you focus on the things around you?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Like that.”  
  
“You want me to focus on the lantern?”  
  
She chuckled. “No. The lantern’s just for ambiance. We’re going to sit. And when thoughts happen, or when you feel something, you’re going to focus on that.”  
  
He baulked, and she must have noticed, because she reached over to briefly squeeze his hand.  
  
“Not like that. The idea isn’t to let it consume you, it’s… more of the opposite. Think of it like a cloud floating across your mind. In time, it will pass over the horizon.” She paused, her eyes settling on the lantern. “We sit, and observe. We don’t _react_ to it. We don’t shy away from it or fear it or try to push it away. Just watch. The feelings that you get when that thought comes into your head, the way it affects how your body responds. The shape of it and the colour. We sit. We observe. The thought or the emotion becomes distant. It becomes a thing separate from ourselves. It’s a thing you can look at, and understand from the outside. And then it drifts away.”  
  
“Did you learn this at PTSD camp?”  
  
“Yes. It takes some practice, but you already know how to do this. You’re just allowing your focus to settle on something else this time.”  
  
He tried for ten minutes. At first he avoided thought at all, and focused his attention on the lamp in front of him, the breath of the woman at his side. But the low background hiss at the back of his mind grew louder and more intrusive, a wordless anger, an anxiety, that he wanted nothing to do with. This was the noise, the screaming, the barbed-wire clamour in his mind that he had let consume him on the road home and desperately tried to drown out with lust ever since.  
  
And he had to focus on this? How? It wasn’t _saying_ anything, it was just… mess. Violence. Behind it there was more, there was a pit in the ground, and pain, and darkness, and if he focused on the noise then those things would rise up and consume him. How was he supposed to focus on that? It was too hard. It would overwhelm him.  
  
He tried focusing on his body instead, the way Sloan had suggested. _Observe_. He did, and noticed his jaw was tight, his breathing quick and shallow. A physical reaction to the noise in his head that he hadn’t even noticed. He tried to slow his breathing, but it was a struggle, and at last he spat out a curse and rubbed his hands across his face.  
   
“It’s not working,” he said, pushing himself up off the couch. “It just — I see it, and it is… _there_. Just… _noise_. But then it grows louder and louder until my head is full. It takes over. I can’t do it.”  
  
“It takes practice,” Sloan repeated. Her eyes were still closed, a serene expression on her face. “I didn’t say it was easy. It’s hard. These aren’t thoughts you want to sit with. You’re used to avoiding them, being afraid of them, and changing that response is tough. It comes, but it takes time. Eventually you can sit with the thought, and it doesn’t hurt so much any more. It loses its power over you.” She opened her eyes, and smiled at him. “I don’t do it as often as I should. That’s why the ambush at the bridge still hurts the way it does. I did it at PTSD camp, and it worked. But then when I came home, I didn’t want to think about it any more. I just wanted to go to school and put it all behind me.”  
  
“Maybe it will always hurt.”  
  
“Maybe it will.”  
  
He looked away from her, out over the settlement. Then he exhaled through the hole where his nose had been, and sat back down beside her, his elbows on his knees.  
  
“I can’t do it,” he repeated. “I don’t want to do it. Why do this if it will hurt anyway?”  
  
“You don’t have to do it,” she said, unfolding her legs and stretching them out in front of her. “I can’t make any promises about what will feel better and when. But you asked, so I told you.” She looked up, and met his eyes. “This isn’t easy. This is _work._ You told me the morning after we found you that you didn’t want to be soft. I know this sounds like some therapeutic new-age bullshit, sitting here looking at a lantern, but this is the opposite of soft. There is no soft on this side of trauma. This is about sitting with pain until it can’t hurt you any more. This is the hardest shit there is.”  
  
Charon leant forward, and rubbed his palms together. He looked over at her, her face impassive and striking in the lamplight.  
  
“Why did you stop?” he asked her at last. “If it helped, why stop?”  
  
“Because I wanted to pretend that wasn’t who I was. I didn’t want to be the girl with trauma. I didn’t want to be the soldier who went to war and couldn’t handle it. I just… I wanted to be me again. So I put it in a box, and I pretended I was the same person I had always been.”  
  
“Are you still pretending?”  
  
“No.” She smiled. “Everyone who cared about that kind of thing is dead. There’s no such thing as a normal girl now. I think sometimes that I only became the real me after the world ended. But maybe that’s just something that happens to everyone in their early thirties, and mine just happened to coincide with the apocalypse.” She shot him a sidelong look. “Were you wondering if you know the real me?”  
  
“Yes,” he admitted. “You never talk about the war. I forget you were a soldier, sometimes. You have carried this shit with you all this time and I never saw it.”  
  
“Because it’s… it’s not…” She hesitated, letting her eyes wander up over the roof. “It doesn’t _define_ me. It’s still hard to think about, yes, but it happened a long time ago. I’ve done a lot of stuff since then. I got my degree, I got married, I started my career. My brother died. I had a kid. Sometimes I have bad dreams, and when I think about it, it still hurts. But most of the time, I don’t think about it.” She shrugged. “Like all the things _you_ don’t think about.”  
  
“The things I don’t think about…” He cleared his throat, and swallowed, looking down at his hands. “They live in dark places in my head. In pits, in jail cells. Behind doors I could not open if I wanted to. But they do not _stay_ there. That is the problem. Someone will say something that opens the doors, and then… Employers don’t like it when their servants lose their minds.”  
  
She shifted a little closer, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.  
  
“I don’t want the bunker to live in the pits,” she said softly. “I don’t want it giving you hell in fifty years when you hear a yao-guai growl. But if you want to put it in the pit and cover it up, that’s what we’ll do.”  
  
“No. It just… it’s easier. It’s what I’ve always done. This week, the hunkering down, that was better. But this?” He closed his eyes for a moment, and exhaled. “It’s too hard.” He shook his head, and glanced at her. “Do you get Hancock to do this, when the sounds in his head get too loud? Do you make him _focus_ on them?”  
  
“I don’t _make_ people do anything,” she said with a wry smile. “Not him, or you. Anyway… Hancock doesn’t sit with things. He drowns things.”  
  
Charon hesitated.  
  
“Do you not… _worry_ about him?”  
  
“Sometimes.” She leant forward, her hands grasping the edge of the couch, and kicked her feet. “It’s not fair to start a relationship with someone with the plan to make them into someone else. I never wanted to change him, or to save him. He doesn’t need saving.”  
  
“Hmph.” Charon stared at the lantern, a hand on his knee. “Perhaps he is right. Chems are the best way to deal with shit.”  
  
“Maybe he is.”  
  
Charon gave her a sharp look. “You don’t mean that.”  
  
She shrugged. “I don’t have all the answers. He’s survived this long. Maybe he’s right. Medicate it. We medicate everything else.”  
  
“I have survived longer than he has. Does that mean denial is the best way to deal with shit?”  
  
“That depends. Are you happy?”  
  
The question disoriented him, and he straightened, leaning away from her a little.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Hancock’s happy, sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. He’s living the life he wants to live, the best way he knows how. Right now, it’s working. And maybe next week it won’t work any more. And we’ll deal with that when it happens.” She gave him a thin smile. “So. Denial. Is that working? Are you happy?”  
  
He looked away, back at the glowing lantern, and swallowed.  
  
“I _was_ happy,” he said. “Between the cave, and the clearing by the spring… I was happy.”  
  
“Well, I’m glad. Even if it’s in the past tense.” She bumped her shoulder against his arm. “I know that was before all this shit happened, but you were happy. We can go back to that.”  
  
“No, I — I can’t go back to that again. No. That was when I was dreaming. When they followed us, and I didn’t see them.”  
  
“I thought we’d established that that wasn’t your fault.”  
  
“Will you _stop_ that?” He bared his teeth in a grimace of frustration. “I am not _blaming_ myself. I am learning from a _mistake_. I was in a fucking fog. Things are different now; I can’t go back to that and I don’t want to. If this — this thing we have, you and me — if this is _real_ then it can’t just be a thing in a dream. It has to be _here,_ in the real world, where bad things happen.”  
  
She was quiet, then, and it was a long moment before he worked up the courage to look at her. The sun had set, and she was half lost in shadow, lines and angles picked out in the dim light from the lantern. Then she leant forward, her hand on his knee, and kissed him.  
  
“This is real,” she breathed, pulling back to press her forehead against his. “And I’m sorry if I get caught up in dreams. I just want you to be happy. I’ll go down into the pits with you if you want me to.”  
  
“No.” He raised a hand to her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. “The breaking helped,” he admitted. “More than I wanted it to. Your way is better.”  
  
“Give it a chance,” she told him. “It’s not easy, and it might be a while before you feel like it’s working. But it helps. Eventually, it helps.”  
  
“ _You_ help,” he said, putting an arm around her and drawing her closer. “You are my favourite distraction.”  
  
“Or part of me is, anyway,” she joked.  
  
“Not like that, beauty. You’re an anchor. You bring me back to myself.”  
  
She kissed him then, pushing herself up onto her knees. Her hand trailed up the inside of his thigh, until Charon broke away, clearing his throat, and looked out at the dark city below.  
  
“Not here, smoothskin, please. With the light… someone might see.”  
  
She leant off the edge of the couch, snagging the lantern off the ground and snuffing out the flame.  
  
“There,” she said in a throaty voice. “Now no one will see. Just so long as we’re quiet…”  
  
Charon was not entirely sure, but then she slipped her hand inside his pants and he changed his mind.  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS my semester is ALMOST OVER. 
> 
> This chapter is like brand spanking new, I was trying to write a beginning to another chapter that was going to be next but this got long enough to be a chapter all by itself so the walk to Goodneighbor's going to take another week. 
> 
> Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this year?? Add me! I'm Prosateuse there (as everywhere).


	69. Armour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goodneighbor at last

He tried the focusing again while she was sleeping. He watched the sixth day dawning from the shack on the roof, with laughter in his head. Laughter, and the sick thud of the hammers against his broken flesh.   
  
Sitting with this… it was hard. He could taste blood, and wasn’t sure if that was memory or if he’d bitten the inside of his cheek. He closed his eyes and let the anxiety and the pain sit with him, tried to distance himself from them, to see them from the outside. The tingle in his skin, that taste in his mouth, the quickness of his breath. He sat with them for a few long moments before it became too much, and he pushed the feelings away, opening his eyes to focus on the sky as it shaded from indigo to purple to blue. He was _here_. Here, on Sloan’s roof. Safe. The couch under him was old and worn, the springs gone, too soft. The air was cool. A door closed somewhere in the town below, and there was a faint crackle as a radio robot spluttered to life. The sounds of Diamond City waking.   
  
He was beginning to find a kind of solace in the dawn. It was peaceful. Quiet, with the distant sound of birds, the slow waking-up of a settlement. And it made him think of her.  
  
As the stars faded, he slipped down the ladder, and pulled the trap door shut behind him.  
  
There was some kind of trick to this _focusing_ that he wasn’t getting. The idea wasn’t to let it consume him, she’d said, but he didn’t know how to keep that from happening. Perhaps that would only come with time, with distance. Now, it was overwhelming.  
  
 He slipped quietly down the stairs, and found her sitting on her bed, putting things into her pack. He paused on the stairs to watch her, his head tilted to one side.   
  
“Are we leaving?” he asked, and she glanced up at him with a smile.  
  
“Unless you’d rather stay,” she said. “We’ve done what we came here to do. Besides, you’re starting to look a little antsy, I figured you were getting bored of these four walls.”  
  
“Not antsy.” He shrugged, heading down the stairs to join her. “I have spent longer than this in one place. But it does feel…” he hesitated. “…Confining. It is one thing if I cannot leave because of an order, or because the place is surrounded by super mutants. This feels different.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“There is no reason why you should be, smoothskin. This has been a good week.”  
  
“Really?” She looked up at him, her brows rising. “I mean… sure, there’s been a lot of sex, but I figured all the other shit kind of cancelled it out.”  
  
“I have enjoyed having you all to myself,” he said, kneeling on the bed beside her and leaning down to kiss her. “And you were right, damn you. How did you put it? Cut it out, so it doesn’t rot?”  
  
“Something like that.” She ran her fingers over his chest, stroking the bandage beneath the cloth of his shirt. “How are you? Physically, I mean. Is your leg all right to travel?”  
  
“It’s fine, woman, stop fussing.”  
  
“I mean, you _say_ that, but I had to re-stitch your chest a few days ago. You push yourself too hard, love.”  
  
“You weren’t complaining at the time,” he said with a smirk. “You cannot blame me for getting carried away. You are bewitching.”  
  
She laughed. “Look, I want to get out the door sometime before noon, so whatever’s running through your head right now…”  
  
“Understood.”  
  
“…Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time for that sort of thing in Goodneighbor.”  
  
“Will there?” He suppressed a sigh. “I will have to share you.”  
  
“Is that really going to break your heart?”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that, beauty.”  
  
“You can still kiss me in Goodneighbor. Like this.” She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him in a way that made him want to push her down onto the bed and tear off her clothes.  
  
With some effort he pulled away, taking a breath.  
  
“Stop that,” he told her, “or we will never leave.”  
  
She grinned. “Come on, then. Let’s blow this joint before the town wakes up.”  
  
Once out of Diamond City, they took their time. They were in no rush, and by Charon’s reckoning it was a rare raider who was awake at this hour, so he felt little need to hurry Sloan along to the safety of Goodneighbor’s walls. Such as they were.   
  
He hadn’t lied, when he’d said it had been a good week. Even telling her to stop fussing had put a warmth in his chest. When was the last time anyone had fussed over him? Yes, this week the mess in his head had been worse than usual. A lot worse. But he had suffered horrors before, and this had been the first time he’d been able to break apart without fear of punishment. The security of that — and, yes, the sound of her gasping as she came — had made this week a much better one than she understood.  
  
It felt good to be outside again. On their way back from the bunker he had been wounded, useless, and it had eaten at him the entire way. He’d walked with the expectation of attack at any moment. Now he was healed again, or almost. His leg, it was true, would need a couple more weeks before he felt strong again, but all the same he felt capable of responding to an attack. Enough that the walk was a pleasant one, almost relaxing.   
  
Perhaps it was something in the morning air. It seemed to infect Sloan as well. A smile hovered on her face, and she hummed quietly to herself as they walked.  
  
She stopped beside a huge building, her eyes wandering up over its carved walls.  
  
“I’m going to swap some books at the library,” she said, jabbing her thumb towards the old building. “You wanna come with? Sometimes some of the super mutants sneak back in but I can handle ‘em if you’d rather not.”  
  
Charon bristled a little at that. “I am not fragile,” he reminded her. “I can kill super mutants.”  
  
“I know you can, Charon. But it’s your week off, kinda.”  
  
“Perhaps I _want_ to kill super mutants on my week off,” he said gruffly, folding his arms.  
  
She grinned at him. “You are the freakin’ cutest. Come on, then.”  
  
The library was a mess, but all the same a kind of order had started to form amongst the piles of ruined books. One or two shelves had been set up in the foyer, with books that seemed relatively untouched, and Sloan paused in front of one to slip a few books from her pack onto the top shelf.  
  
“Not enough to bother with categorisation at this point,” she said. “These are all the ones I’ve read. To find something new we have to dig into the bowels of the place a bit further.”  
  
“You did not bring the books you took from… from the man with the long hair?”  
  
She shook her head. “I’d like to read them first. They looked interesting. Not many novels, but some knowledge there that might otherwise be lost. That’s valuable.” She set the final volume on the shelf and dusted off her hands. “Come on.”  
  
He followed her down the hall, through a great wide space filled with piles of mouldering books and dusty, broken shelves. It would still have been a nice building, if it wasn’t for the rotting super mutants sprawled over the rest of the place.   
  
“My bad,” she said, looking over her shoulder as he stepped gingerly around one of the putrid bodies. “They’re too big to move. At least there aren’t any in the entryway.”  
  
She dug into the piles, tossing ruined books to one side and setting other ones behind her to look through later. Then she stilled, and he heard the sharp intake of breath.  
  
“Oh, my god.”  
  
“Sloan?”  
  
“Ginsberg.” She looked over at him, her eyes shining with excitement. “There’s a copy of _Howl_ here.”  
  
“I do not know this story.”  
  
“It’s a poem. A book of poetry. Look, I’m — I’m not going to give this one back. Will you do me a favour and not tell Daisy I have it? She’ll get cross with me for stealing from the library.”  
  
Charon shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. As far as he was concerned, these books may as well belong to her. It wasn’t as if anyone else was going to come in here to borrow them.  
  
“What is so important about this poem?” he asked her.  
  
“I love it, that’s all. It was pretty significant at the time. There was an obscenity trial and everything. It was banned for years. I’m actually surprised they even had a copy.” She got to her feet, brushing dust reverently off its cover as she went to her pack and dug through it. She found a pen, and opened the front cover to write a couple of short sentences.  
  
“Are you allowed to write in books?” Charon smirked at her.  
  
“This sort of thing? Yes. It’s tradition. Nothing like finding an old book with an inscription in the front. Not library books, of course, but since I’m not giving it back…”  
  
“I was teasing you,” he said, and she blushed.  
  
“Sorry. I’m distracted. It’s just that Hancock’s going to _love_ this.”  
  
“I cannot imagine him liking poetry.”  
  
“Aside from something like ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’?” She chuckled, closing the book and slipping it into her pack. “If you’re thinking of someone like Shelley or Wordsworth, you’re right, they’re not really his speed. This is different. This is going to light him on fire.”  
  
“Why? What is special about it?”  
  
Her lips quirked to one side in a half-smile.   
  
“ _I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…_ It’s about drugs and freedom and sex and rebellion and despair and the search for meaning. It’s about being failed by a world that doesn’t understand you. It’s a howl.” She shook her head. “When I was in college there was another obscenity trial — they’d have one once every decade or so, sometimes it’d get banned and then the ban would be challenged and overturned… Of course, every time they had a trial they reminded people about it all over again, so off they’d go and read it. My brother gave me a copy when I was sixteen. It turned my world upside down.”  
  
 She hummed to herself as they wound their way back through the library.  
  
“Do you like poetry?” she asked him abruptly.   
  
Charon shrugged. “Some, maybe. I have not had much chance to read it. Why?”  
  
“I was just thinking… There’s a lot of stuff I don’t really know about you. What kind of movies you like, favourite authors, favourite bands. Not even what kinds of food you like best. You eat anything.”   
  
“Of course. You feed me more than scraps. Any food is better than none.”  
  
She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyebrows pinched together. “You like… fresh meat, snack cakes, mutfruit if it’s not too ripe… anything with iguana in it… mirelurk eggs, but not the meat so much…”  
  
He huffed a laugh. “I thought you didn’t know.”  
  
“I mean, I do. It’s just that you never mention the stuff you like.”  
  
“I am grateful for whatever you give me.” She frowned, and he reached over to tousle her hair. “I am serious. You feed me well.”  
  
“No point in under-feeding my own body-guard,” she said.   
  
She pushed open the library doors, and blinked as they stepped into the morning sun. It had risen a little more while they’d been inside the library, and now it was shining down an empty alleyway, bathing her in light. She paused for a moment, drinking it in, before she turned and led the way on towards Goodneighbor.  
  
“What about the rest?” she asked him, still chewing on the inside of her lip. “Movies, music? Books?”  
  
“I do not remember any movies,” he said thoughtfully. “Books… There was one Daisy lent to me. It was about revenge.”  
  
“Well that narrows it down,” she said dryly, and he chuckled.  
  
“There was a man, a sailor. He was betrayed, and sent to die in some prison.”  
  
“Oh! The Count of Monte Cristo.”  
  
“Yes. I didn’t finish it. I think it is still in your room at the Rexford.”  
  
“ _Our_ room,” she said.  
  
“…Yes,” he said, a warmth flaring in his chest. “Our room.”  
  
“Wait, do you want your own room?” She shot him a look, her expression almost alarmed.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Are you sure? You should have your own space, if you want it. I mean, to start with I just… I mean, you always hung out with me, when I was sleeping. I didn’t think about it. But you should have your own space.”  
  
“I won’t use it, smoothskin.”  
  
“You should have it anyway. Just to store your stuff.”  
  
“I don’t _have_ any stuff.”  
  
“Well we’ll _get_ you some stuff.”  
  
“What started this?” He looked down at her, studying her scarred profile. “I don’t _need_ these things.”  
  
“I should have thought of it before,” she said, almost to herself. “Why didn’t I get you your own room?”  
  
“Woman. I do not want my own room. I will not spend time in it and I have nothing to store in it.” He paused. “Do _you_ want… space?”  
  
“Not especially.”  
  
“We have been cooped up together for a week —”  
  
“I _enjoyed_ that. I hadn’t seen you for _weeks,_ Charon.”   
  
“I know.”  
  
She was quiet for a moment, her brows low.   
  
“It’s good to have you back again,” she said at last, her voice hushed.  
  
“It is good to _be_ back,” he replied softly. He cleared his throat. “Mistress. I know I have not been… attentive.”  
  
“You have been _exceedingly_ attentive.”  
  
“Not like that,” he said with a smirk. “This… everything, the bunker, the walk back, dealing with me. It has been stressful. Difficult.”  
  
“Yes,” she admitted. “But I’m fine, Charon. If I need to have a breakdown, I’ll let you know.”  
  
He huffed a breath out through the hole where his nose had been.  
  
“So what made you ask about the room? What’s wrong?”  
  
She shrugged. “Nothing’s _wrong_. I don’t know… I just felt like I’ve taken you for granted. I had this book for Hancock and I thought, what would Charon like? And I realised I have no idea what your favourite books are. You never talk about things like that, and I’d never thought to ask. It made me feel a little selfish.”  
  
“Why would you ask, when my reply is always that I can’t remember?”  
  
She said nothing to that, only sighed and reached for his hand.  
  
Charon had not yet acquired the association of safety that made Sloan relax automatically when Goodneighbor’s neon sign came into view. All the same, it felt good when the door closed behind them. This town was familiar now. In Diamond City he was an interloper, illegal and unwanted. Here he was the same as anyone else. Even the humans.   
  
He glanced down at his mistress to see she was smiling at him, affection in her eyes.   
  
“Feel better?” she asked.  
  
He rolled his eyes at her. “All right,” he said. “I see why you like this place.”  
  
She caught sight of Fahrenheit leaning up against the Old State House, lighting a cigarette, and she sauntered over. The two women were not exactly _friends,_ as far as Charon could tell, but they held a certain wary respect for one another.   
  
“Heya, sister,” Fahrenheit said. “How’ve you been?”  
  
“Not bad,” she said carefully.   
  
She nodded to Charon. “You found him, then. Good.”  
  
“We did. Did himself not fill you in?”  
  
She shrugged. “He had some business to take care of when he got back, so. Didn’t really catch up. He’s been quiet. You know what he’s like, when he gets in his head.” She blew a stream of smoke into the sky. “You up for a game of chess? We haven’t played in a while.”  
  
“Sure. Maybe later? I’d like to get settled first. We’ve had a time of it lately.”  
  
Fahrenheit nodded. “I’ll see you round, then.”  
  
“Oh — wait.” Sloan slipped her pack off her shoulder and rooted around for something. “Here,” she said, pulling out the book. “Can you do me a favour and give this to him when he shows himself? I just know I’ll forget if I wait.”  
  
“Sure thing.”  
  
She huffed a sigh as they picked their way through town to the Rexford.  
  
“I feel like I hardly ever spend time with Fahrenheit. Every time I come back I want to spend every moment with Hancock, so we haven’t hung out in ages. Never really got to know her the way I feel like I should’ve.”  
  
“I do not see you with her much,” Charon agreed.  
  
“She’s smart. Like _really_ smart. It’s nice to… I mean, not that other people in this century aren’t just as smart, but she reminds me of some of my colleagues back at my law firm. She’s got this really focused mind.”  
  
“Perhaps she takes a lot of mentats.”  
  
Sloan snorted. “Yeah. Maybe I ought to be popping one before we play chess.”  
  
“Do you win?”   
  
“Sometimes. She wins about two out of three, but she likes chess more than I do.” She rubbed her nose as they tripped their way up the stairs. “I’ve never been a big player. It’s good for the brain, though.”  
  
“I think I used to play,” he confessed to her, and she turned to look at him as they walked down the hall.  
  
“Really? But you don’t remember?”  
  
“I know what the pieces do, how they move. I remember… castling the king, that kind of thing. Strategy. I do not know when I played, or with whom.”  
  
“We should play sometime.”  
  
“If you wish.”  
  
She pushed open the door to their room, and flashed him a grin. “We can play strip chess. Every time you lose a piece, you lose a piece of clothing.”  
  
“That will not work well with chess. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice a piece in order to… ah.” She was still grinning. “I see. An interesting strategy.”  
  
He let the door swing shut behind him, and paused, letting the feeling of being back here settle onto him. This place might not be as safe as Home Plate, with its heavy doors and thick concrete walls, but it was _familiar,_ and there was a comfort in that. His armour was sitting on top of the dresser, and he hesitated for a moment before crossing the room to run his hand along the steel and leather.   
  
“You all right?” she asked him, shucking off her jacket.  
  
He shrugged. “Strange to miss armour.”  
  
“You wore it almost every day. Shit like that becomes a part of you.”  
  
“Like you,” he said, smiling to himself.   
  
She let out a bark of laughter. “You wear me every day? You have done the last week, I’ll give you that.”  
  
He started. “N-no, I —” Charon’s cheeks felt like they were blazing, and he cleared his throat as he turned to her. “I meant —”  
  
“I know what you meant.”  
  
“You’re not — you —”  
  
“Charon, it’s _fine_. I’m the one who made the joke.”  
  
He stepped forward, reaching up to cup her cheek with one hand.  
  
“You don’t think that I think of you like that…?”  
  
Her face softened as she smiled.  
  
“Of course not, doofus. I know you care.”  
  
“You’re not a toy.” He shook his head. “If I made you feel like one…”  
  
“You didn’t. Charon, we’ve been over this.” She took his hand, squeezing it between hers. “You have no reason to feel guilty, or uncomfortable. I always feel valued, with you.” She kissed his knuckles, and released him. “Now. It’s your week off, so… what do you want to do?”  
  
“For now?” He shrugged. “Are we not… getting settled?”  
  
“Well, yeah. After that.”  
  
“I just want to stay here.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows.  
  
“You’ve been cooped up inside with me for a week, and you want more of that?”  
  
“You do not have to stay. Or… I will follow you, if you wish, mistress.”  
  
“I didn’t mean _that_.” She sighed, and flopped down onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling. “It’s _your_ week off. You can do whatever you like. I just thought you might… like to get outside. Go to the bar, see people.” She hesitated, pushing herself up on one hand. “Charon, honestly… are you okay?”  
  
“You don’t need to keep checking, smoothskin,” he rasped.  
  
“But you’d tell me, if you weren’t okay. Right?”  
  
“If that is what the mistress wishes.”  
  
Her face contorted as she struggled with that.   
  
“It _is,_ but…”  
  
“But it is not an order. I understand.” He chuckled, sitting down on the bed beside her and putting an arm around her shoulder. “You need to worry less about me. I will not break.”  
  
“I know that. It’s just that I know it’s tough, sometimes, when you have to go out in public, and none of them _get_ it, and you have to pretend to be normal. It’s hard.”  
  
“I have never pretended to be normal.”  
  
“Not _normal,_ maybe,” she said with a smirk. “But you put on your armour. Pull up the drawbridge.”  
  
“This part I am used to,” he reminded her. “I prefer it.”  
  
“I really am worrying too much, aren’t I?” She sighed.  
  
“Yes.” He watched her for a moment, her feet dangling over the side of the bed, the line between her brows that meant she was thinking far too hard. “Sloan. I think I have stirred up bad thoughts in your head.”  
  
She looked up at him in surprise, her mouth falling open just a little.  
  
“Bad thoughts?”  
  
“Not thoughts, then. Noise. You are worrying more than you should. It… it is… not unpleasant, to be worried about. But please stop. You never need to worry about me, smoothskin. I have lived this long. I will be fine.”  
  
A wry smile tugged at the corner of her lips, and she shook her head with a sigh, dropping her eyes to the floor..  
  
“Do I have my breakdown now?”  
  
“If you wish.”  
  
“It’s not you. It was the two and a half weeks, and then when we found you you were so hurt… I don’t know what I expected. To start with I thought you were dead, and then when we made the drop… I didn’t want to hope you were fine, but I guess a part of me did. I wanted to rush in there and rescue you in a blaze of triumph and instead there was just more anxiety. More stress, more tension.” She rested her hand on his thigh, her thumb rubbing along a seam of his pants. “The last week was good. I needed that. You kept me exhausted and happy. I guess I just never dealt with any of that stuff from before. I keep expecting you to disappear again. You figure once the stressful situation ends, so will the stress, but I’m not sure it does.” She looked up at him then, her smile warm. “I know you’re okay. Or at least, you will be. You’re the strongest person I know.”  
  
He opened his mouth to deny it, and hesitated.  
  
“I do not _feel_ strong,” he said instead.  
  
“No, well… ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills.’ You break, and you heal. And you survive.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought the Fallout world would be a bit more conservative than ours, and crack down more on troublemakers like Ginsberg. 
> 
> Hey guys, the semester is over! That means I finally get to catch up on writing fic! WHOO! And uhhh yeah there's a lot of writing to do there. I know where we're going, and a few of the chapters on the way are mostly done. It's the in-between bits I need to write. We are now venturing into part two of the healing process, in which Hancock has far too much influence.
> 
> shit I just realised this is chapter 69 and it contains no sex. I am ashamed. 
> 
> Oh hey and we've hit 100 subscribers! Thank you, everyone! I love you! <3


	70. Naked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Expanding Charon's comfort zones. Hehehehheheh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I assume is Hancock's bed is trashed in the game, which I've always found amusing. For the sake of the fic I have rebuilt it and also rotated it 90 degrees. 
> 
> oh and uhhh nsfw. Light bondage ahead.

  
Sometime after noon, the sound of boots echoed down the hall. Charon raised his head from his book, and a moment later the door slammed open to reveal an animated ghoul in a red coat.   
  
Hancock did not look entirely like himself. There was a _look_ in his eyes that was almost fevered, and for a moment Charon wondered whether he was on something, psycho or even fury, until he saw the indulgent smile on Sloan’s face, and understood.  
  
She slid off the bed, walking over to Hancock with her arms outstretched.  
  
“Hey, gorgeous,” she said, winding them around his neck. “Did you like the poem?”   
  
Instead of replying, Hancock reached down to grab her hips with both hands and threw her across his shoulder. Sloan let out a shriek that dissolved into giggles, and Hancock grinned.  
  
“She gives me _poetry,_ ” he said to Charon. “Can you believe this dame? Fuckin’ _poetry_.”   
  
“Good poetry?”  
  
“What do _you_ think?”  
  
Charon chuckled to himself as Hancock stalked back towards the door.  
  
“Bring her back in one piece,” he said.  
  
Hancock paused, and threw a smirk back over his shoulder.   
  
“No promises.”  
  
It was hours before Charon felt the lack of her, and put down his book. Before the bunker he would have gone down to the Third Rail, perhaps, or found himself something to do, but she was his touchstone and he needed to see her, just to remind himself that she was there.  
  
After all, it had been _hours_. Surely they would be wearing clothing again by now.   
  
He decided to risk it, and crossed the street to the Old State House. There were only a couple of guards today, each wearing a long-suffering expression, but neither stopped him as he climbed the stairs.   
  
There were no guards at all on this level. Hancock’s office door was locked, and no one answered when he rapped his knuckles against it, so he turned and surveyed the door on the opposite side of the landing. He had seen inside the room before; briefly, as Hancock had stepped out onto his balcony to address his people. There was a sofa in there, and a bed. His bedroom, presumably.   
  
Charon hesitated, and knocked on the door.   
  
“Come in!” a voice called out cheerfully, so he pushed it open, and went inside.  
  
Sloan was naked on the bed, her arms stretched above her head, handcuffed to a metal bar above the headboard. Hancock was nowhere to be seen, and she looked… rumpled.   
  
He stared at her. Then he turned, abruptly, and closed the door behind him.  
  
“Ah,” she said. “You’re not Hancock.”  
  
“No.” His cheek twitched. “He has you — what — did he _hurt_ you?”  
  
She let out a bark of laughter. “No, Charon, we’re just playing! Playing _rough,_ but y’know. We like rough.”   
  
“But he _left_ you here.”  
  
“He was just going to get us something to drink. Sustenance.” She shook her hands, making the handcuff chains rattle against the bar. “He’s been a little while, though. I was beginning to worry he was getting distracted, but if he went to get you —”  
  
“He did _not_ come to get me,” Charon said. “I came because I… I wanted to… check in.” He looked her up and down again. She was beginning to squirm a little in a way that made him tingle in his extremities. “Stop that. It’s distracting.”  
  
“Listen, if you want to stay, that’d be — I mean I’m on board with that, and you _know_ Hancock will be on board with that, but I’m not really so sure that _you’re_ on board with that, so —”  
  
“I couldn’t find any nuka quantum so I got you some cherry.” Hancock kicked the door closed behind him, and looked up at Charon with an expression of surprise.  
  
And then he _grinned._  
  
“I was just leaving,” Charon said hastily.  
  
“No, no! You stay.” He handed him a bottle of nuka cherry and swaggered across the room to drop onto his couch. He gestured with his bottle, and then popped off the cap. “Go ahead.”  
  
Sloan giggled, and Charon gave her a look.   
  
“Look, I practically giftwrapped her for ya! She can’t run away. ‘Sides, you know what she’s like. Fucking insatiable. Be good to have someone else around, give me a break. I _am_ in my thirties. Don’t got the stamina I used to.”  
  
Charon looked from Hancock, to Sloan, and back again. He came to a decision.  
  
“You,” he said, jabbing a finger toward Hancock. “Out.”  
  
His face split into a grin, though there was a hint of something dangerous in the expression that made Charon think perhaps he shouldn’t have ordered the man out of his own damn bedroom.   
  
“Say please,” he said. “And you gotta make her scream.”  
  
Charon hesitated.   
  
“Please.”  
  
“All right.” Hancock took a swig of his nuka cherry and hopped off the couch. He crawled onto his bed, leaning close to Sloan’s ear to whisper something that made her shiver and bite her lip. Then he threw another grin at Charon, tipped his hat, and closed the door behind him.  
  
“What did he say?” Charon asked her.  
  
“Just instructions,” she said.   
  
“Instructions?”  
  
“We’re playing a game,” she said again. “This one is… power, indulgence, punishment and reward. I’ve been _bad,_ so he’s left me in here, all by my lonesome, to be punished by this big tough ghoul he knows.”  
  
“…Me?”  
  
“Well, I hope so. There’s always the chance someone else is about to walk in that door.”  
  
Charon eyed the door in suspicion. It remained closed.  
  
“You and he have a strange arrangement,” he said at last.  
  
“Yep,” she said happily. “Pretty hot, though”  
  
“He doesn’t truly leave you alone with…”  
  
“Oh — god, no. He’s always there. You don’t need to worry.” She shook her handcuffs against the bar. “Now, are you going to play along, or what?”  
  
“No,” he said, and she pouted. “I just came to check on you, I did not intend to interrupt your… sexual escapades.”  
  
She let out a cackle.  
  
“Sexcapades!”  
  
“…Yes. Have you been taking jet?”  
  
“Maaaayyybe. Only a little.” She grinned. “I'm not impaired, or anything. Are you sure you don’t want to play? The giver-out of punishment?”  
  
“I cannot punish you,” he reminded her. “You know that, mistress.”  
  
“Use your _imagination,_ Charon. I have been bad, so I’ve been tied up and left here all naked and vulnerable…?”  
  
She trailed off, biting her lip in a way that bordered on the obscene, and all at once Charon understood. Fucking _Christ._ He was not familiar with games like this, _playing pretend,_ but she liked it, didn’t she? That Silver Shroud get-up… And god fucking damnit the rush of blood to his dick when he thought of her all… all naughty and troublesome and in need of a hard fucking, just to put her in her place…  
  
He growled, and there was a flash of delight in her eyes.   
  
“That’s the spirit,” she said.  
  
“Little sluts who are being _punished_ should not tease,” he told her, and took a step forward.  
  
“Oooh,” she said, and grinned. “He _means_ it. Wait wait, wait, hold on.” She held up her foot, as if raising her hand to stay him. “This is Hancock’s game, and Hancock’s room. So Hancock gets details. If you’re not okay with that, we should stop now.”  
  
Charon grabbed her ankle in his hand, brushing his fingers along the sole of her foot until she shrieked.  
  
“First she teases me, then she tells me I must agree to her terms or get out. No wonder she is being punished.”  
  
“Charon, yes or no!”  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” he said.  
  
He dropped her foot, moving over her to grab a fistful of her hair and kiss her. She made a soft little noise of alarm, and when he finally let her up to breathe she gasped.  
  
“Careful,” she whispered. “With my hands bound I can’t tap out.”  
  
“Foolish woman.” He took her chin in his hand, grazing his thumb along her bottom lip. “You think I can put you in any danger?”  
  
She exhaled, and the look in her eyes made him hesitate. Had she felt afraid? He could not hurt her, but he could scare her, make her uncomfortable, and he didn’t want that. Not really.  
  
“I know that,” she said. “I just — if I need to stop —”  
  
“I must pay attention. Understood,” he murmured, and kissed her again.  
  
This time he paid more attention to the sounds she made, the way she breathed, and it was intimate in a way he hadn’t anticipated. He hadn’t thought to find intimacy in a game like this. It brought another level of pleasure to the experience. There was _trust._ She trusted him.   
  
But he was still supposed to be the punishment, after all.   
  
He bit down gently on her lip, and this time the sound she made was deeper, softer, reaching down his spine into his balls. He pulled away, lifting one hand to rest his palm against her throat and press his fingers into her skin just enough to feel the blood thrum. Her lips were a deep pink, her eyes wide and shining, and he memorised the look on her face before he took his hand away and lifted her off the bed. He turned her, careful not to twist the handcuffs around her wrists, and set her back down on her knees, facing the wall.   
  
“Brace yourself,” he rasped, and she shivered, pressing her hands up against the wall.  
  
Charon freed his erection, stroking himself slowly as he looked at her, at the mess of dark hair and the curve of her waist. And that goddamn _ass_. Fuck. If only he could fucking spank her.   
  
…Hancock could spank her. Maybe he should call him back in…  
  
Then Sloan shifted, her thighs parting slightly, and he changed his mind.   
  
He grabbed her ass with both hands, fingertips pressing into the firm muscle. She was glistening wet and he didn’t wait. He slid one hand to her hip and pushed into her, grunting as her heat enveloped him.  
  
“Fuck.” He took a couple of deep breaths, and tried to remember the role he was meant to be playing. Ah… right. He was the punishment. “Does he let just anyone fuck you, then?” he asked, pressing in further, until his cock was nudging up against her cervix. “Answer me.”  
  
She made a soft little whimpering sound, and squirmed.  
  
“Only when I deserve it,” she mumbled.  
  
He withdrew almost entirely, just the head of his cock still inside her, and slammed back into her. She made a sound somewhere between a moan and a shout of alarm, and he grinned, bending over her for a better angle as he moved his hips in a slow but forceful rhythm.   
  
“Does he let any passing ghoul fill your cunt?” he rasped, and felt her shiver under his hands again. He fisted his hand in her hair, pulling her head back. “Hmm?”  
  
He felt a little push-back from the contract, and let her hair slip through his fingers. It was reassuring to brush up against the boundaries of what was acceptable and _know_ he could not go any further, that it would not let him truly hurt her.   
  
He slowed his thrusts, reaching around to rub her clit, and she swore.  
  
“Ah, ah,” he told her, pressing down on her clit a little harder.   
  
“ _Fuck_. Oh, _god_ —”  
  
She came suddenly, squeezing him hard enough that he let out a grunt, his hand tightening on her hip.   
  
“Fucking _Christ,_ smoothskin…”  
  
She started to say something, but then he bucked his hips and whatever she had wanted to say was overtaken by a moan. Charon grinned, and did it again, eliciting another moan from her, this one almost closer to a yelp.   
  
The _power_ of this game was intoxicating, the more so because he knew he couldn’t hurt her. Scare her, perhaps, but even that was an enticing idea. She was bound and squirming, and _he_ was in control.   
  
He ran a hand up over her ribs to cup her breast, and pinched her nipple. The last week of experimentation had given him a very precise understanding of exactly how much pressure he could use, and exactly how much she enjoyed it.  
  
“Have you _learnt_ your _lesson?_ ” he grunted.  
  
“No!”   
  
She shot an unrepentant look over her shoulder and it was that, the devilish look in her eye — her cheeks pink, her hair a mess — that sent him over the edge.   
  
“ _F-fuck —_ ”   
  
He gasped, pressing himself deeper inside her, his fingertips digging into the muscle of her hip as his climax hit. It was a few moments before he caught his breath, the echoes of pleasure tingling in his fingertips. Then he lowered his head to press a kiss to her shoulder.   
  
“Where are the keys?” he asked her. It was important to him, now, to hold her, to show her in some way that it had all been a game.   
  
“Hancock has them,” she said.   
  
She looked rumpled and a bit sore, her hips dappled with pink where he had gripped her harder than he should. He tucked his cock back inside his pants, adjusting his clothes, and then ran his hands gently down her sides.  
  
“You want to lie down?”  
  
“…Yeah, actually. That’d be good.”  
  
He picked her up, helping her turn so she could lie back against the pillows. She smiled up at him, her hands still stretched above her head, and he bent to kiss her cheek.  
  
Hancock was just outside the door, smoking a cigarette, and when Charon poked his head into the hall he smirked.  
  
“Good job,” he said.  
  
Charon had no idea what to say to that. He was caught between embarrassment and irritation, and in the end he scowled and rasped, “I didn’t do it for you.”  
  
“Well _of course_ not. Still, you met your obligations.” He flashed him a grin, and dropped his cigarette onto the floor. “Can’t ask for anything else.”  
  
He pushed the door open, moving past Charon to climb onto the bed beside Sloan. He took her chin in his hand, studying her face with narrowed eyes.  
  
“Hmm. I dunno. She don’t look very sorry.”  
  
Sloan poked her tongue out between her teeth.  
  
“Where are the keys?” Charon asked him, pushing the door closed.  
  
Hancock considered this, his smirk dying away.  
  
“You want a break, sweetheart?”  
  
“I could stand to rest my arms a little,” she admitted.  
  
He unlocked the handcuffs and tossed them aside, rubbing his hands down her arms as she lowered them.   
  
“You wanna stick around?” he asked Charon, reaching down for the bottle of nuka cherry and handing it to Sloan. “We were gonna have a thing later. Get drunk, get high. MacCready’s in town. Deacon’s around somewhere, too.” He chuckled. “You would hate him.”  
  
Sloan took a few long mouthfuls of her drink, and then handed the bottle to Hancock so she could flop down onto the bed.  
  
“I haven’t seen Deacon in months,” she said.  
  
Hancock smirked at her. “You sure about that, Sunshine?”  
  
She rolled her eyes.   
  
“Deacon’s a spy,” she explained to Charon. “Sort of. He works for the people who helped me take down the Institute. Or I guess I helped them. Anyway he’s a _massive_ liar, don’t believe a word he tells you.”  
  
“Worse than MacCready?”  
  
“ _Way_ worse than MacCready. Like I think he actually has some kind of problem. Maybe he’s been a spy for too long and he doesn’t know how to turn the lying off, or he’s too afraid to trust anyone with the truth… or he’s just a massive prick.” She shrugged. “Don’t want to spend the effort working it out, though. He’s a lot of fun, but… how can you trust someone like that, you know? Can’t fix everyone.”  
  
“You gonna stand there all day, Ferryman?” Hancock asked him. “Come sit down.”  
  
Charon hesitated, and Hancock grinned at him.  
  
“What, my bed’s good enough to fuck on, but not to sit on?”  
  
“I, uh…”  
  
Hancock rolled his eyes. “Look. You don’t gotta make that face. If I didn’t want you in here, you wouldn’t be in here. Now sit your ass down. Sunshine needs some aftercare.”  
  
“…Do I even want to know what that is?” he asked.   
  
Sloan sat up, giving him room, and he sat down the far end of the bed. She stretched back out again, her feet on his leg, her head resting on Hancock’s thigh.  
  
“Aftercare,” she said, “is when I get cuddles.”  
  
“It’s how she knows all the shit you said ain’t serious.”  
  
“You… heard…?” Charon cleared his throat, and fixed his gaze at the opposite wall.  
  
He heard Hancock chuckle.  
  
“Oh, yeah. Great work, by the way.”  
  
Sloan was giggling, and Charon shot her a reproachful look.  
  
“The _point_ is,” she said with a smirk, “being chained up can be a rush, in the moment. But afterwards, when all the hormones wear off, you can feel a bit… I don’t know. Sad, sometimes. Stiff, and sore. It’s the job of the person who does the tying up to make sure you’re safe and comfortable, to give you a stimpak and a drink of something and wrap you up in something warm.”  
  
He looked her over thoughtfully. She didn’t seem to need a stimpak, and she had a drink…  
  
“You need a blanket?” he asked.  
  
She grinned. “I have my something warm. Two things that are warm, actually.”  
  
“Lucky girl,” Hancock teased her.  
  
“ _So_ lucky. This was a good day,” she said in a dreamy sort of voice.  
  
“Gonna get better.”   
  
“I’m going to need a nap first. You guys wear me out.”  
  
“Ghoul stamina,” Hancock said with a grin  
  
“And you call _me_ insatiable. I swear to god.”  
  
Charon traced his hand along the outside of her thigh, smiling to himself. It was bizarre, sitting here with Sloan butt naked and sprawled out over the two of them, in complete comfort. She didn’t care, Hancock didn’t care. Maybe… maybe _he_ didn’t need to care. He trusted her, and she trusted Hancock. That was enough. That was more than he had any right to hope for.  
  
“Are you up for something tonight, Charon?” she asked him. She had closed her eyes, her fingers twisting in the cloth of Hancock’s coat. “I promised I’d get you high.”  
  
“If you wish,” he said.   
  
“That’s a ‘yes, I’d like to get high’ _if you wish_ and not a ‘I’d rather not but I’ll do it if you want me to’ _if you wish_ , right?”  
  
The corner of his lips twitched into a smile.   
  
“You are getting good at this, smoothskin,” he said, running a finger along the sole of her foot until she shrieked.  
  
  
  


 


	71. Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a party so much as a "getting drunk and high with a few friends and also some other guy we found at the bar maybe"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhh my goooddd I am SO sorry. I have STRUGGLED. with this chapter. I had the bits but I had to join them up somehow, and then I moved all this other stuff over to the next chapter, and argh. ARGH, I say. And then I was doing NaNoWriMo when what I really wanted to be doing was writing this, so I stopped NaNo but then I couldn't get back into Charon's head. I'm only just feeling like I'm back there now. Argh. 
> 
> Anyway. We are coming towards the end now, as you know. There are maybe? seven chapters left. Several are in good shape. A few are very much not. Those that aren't might be cut or combined with other ones, so there could be fewer, or they might be expanded and there might end up being more So I have no schedule for you. At the moment, I imagine all will be wrapped up by February. 
> 
> Which raises an important question: Would you rather I write a chunk of the sequel first and then start posting it, so chapters are more regular, or would you prefer to have them as they come? At the moment the only chapters I have written are from partway through the story so it would take a while to sort of.... fill in the bits beforehand.

  
Charon drifted back over to the Old State House after sunset.  
  
He hadn’t stayed long with them earlier. Sitting there with them on Hancock’s bed had been strangely comfortable, almost familiar — like the echoes of something from long ago — but it was still not his place to be there. Sloan fell into a light doze, and there was something in the way Hancock’s hand moved through her hair that suggested to Charon he wanted some privacy, so he’d made his excuses and left them to it.  
  
He didn’t know how to feel about the _thing_ they had planned. He suspected it had been arranged largely for his benefit; Sloan had expressed her intent to get him high since the bunker, for whatever reason. She seemed to think it would help, and hell, maybe it would. Being the _reason_ for something like this, though… it made him uncomfortable. Which was stupid. It wasn’t like Hancock ever needed much convincing to get high. And the mistress would be happy to see MacCready again. It wouldn’t be a big deal. He’d have a few drinks and take whatever Hancock foisted onto him and watch Sloan dance on the coffee table. It would be fine.   
  
There seemed to be more guards around than usual, but from the way they were leisurely leaning against the walls, smiling and chatting, Charon doubted it was due to any threat. Shift change, maybe. They gave him nods and smiles as he climbed the stairs, and with a jolt he realised some of them may have _heard_ him this afternoon. Or _her,_ at least. He met the eyes of the guard at the top of the stairs with trepidation, but there wasn’t any mockery in his smile. If this one had heard, apparently, he didn’t judge.  
  
Hancock’s office door was ajar, and Charon pushed it open, giving Fahrenheit a nod.  
  
“Hey, Ferryman,” Hancock said, looking over his shoulder from the counter at the far end of the room. “Bourbon or rum? There’s other shit downstairs, vodka, beer…”  
  
“Bourbon. Thank you.”  
  
“Ice?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
Hancock held out a glass, shaking it slightly so the ice cubes knocked against the sides, and Charon took it.   
  
He nursed it as he walked around the room. He had only been in here a couple of times before, and neither time had he paid much attention to it, aside from noting the chems scattered over every available surface. There was also a terminal, over by the window, and the book Sloan had given Hancock was lying on the desk beside it.  
  
He picked it up and flicked it open, curious. His eyes caught on the inscription she’d written on the frontispiece: _To my angelheaded hipster — Take a mentat or two before you read. You bring the beer, sweetheart, I’ll bring the cigarettes. — Love, your Sunshine._  
  
He smirked to himself. They did have a habit of being revoltingly sweet. At least most of the time they had the grace to do it out of eye-shot.  
  
The poem itself was nothing like he had expected. Almost like a giant, confused run-on sentence. He scanned the page, then set the book aside. He could see why it might appeal to Hancock, but it wasn’t for him.   
  
“Come over here, Ferryman,” Hancock said, and Charon turned to see he had laid out a series of chems on the low table. “What’s your poison? Med-X?” He flashed him a grin.  
  
Charon barked a laugh. “I have had enough of that recently. I’m surprised you have any left.”  
  
“No fear. Always got something in the stash.” He picked up a tin and shook it a little. “Berry mentats!”  
  
“The ones that make things light up?” He tilted his head to one side.   
  
“That’s them. You liked those, right?”  
  
“Yes. I am surprised you remember.”  
  
“I remember a lot of things. Not sure many of them actually happened, but…”  
  
“I never know whether you are joking when you say things like that,” Charon grumbled, and he heard a snort.  
  
“Oh, he’s not joking.”  
  
Charon looked over at Fahrenheit, who was watching him with a cool, steady gaze.  
  
“That doesn’t bother you?”  
  
She shrugged. “Not really. Believe it or not, he does know what he’s doing.”  
  
Charon hesitated. “And you, you do not… partake?”  
  
“Sure. Mostly mentats or buffout. Psycho, if I need it, but generally I don’t.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “Not tonight, though.”  
  
“Fahrenheit saves chems for special occasions.”  
  
“Like when we’re getting overrun by raiders.” She gave him a rare smile, sharp like a razor. “I’ll be downstairs if anyone needs me.”  
  
“Thanks for playin’ this afternoon,” Hancock said when the door had closed behind her. “Nice having someone around she really trusts.”  
  
Charon did not know what to make of that.   
  
“Why?” he asked him, taking a seat on one of the sofas and sipping at his drink. “The way she talks, I did not think it made much difference.”  
  
“Sure it does. Means I can leave you alone with her.” He waved a hand. “Fine if _I_ trust ‘em, but I ain’t leaving her alone with someone she don’t trust.”  
  
“I appreciate that. That you… keep her safe.”  
  
Hancock collapsed into the easy chair at the end of the coffee table, slinging his leg over the arm.  
  
“Hey, if she don’t feel safe, she ain’t having fun. Then what’s the point?”  
  
Charon made a face. “I wondered that. I was concerned, when I walked in there and saw her chained to the fucking wall.”  
  
“Ah, it’s all consensual. You don’t got nothing to worry about.”  
  
“Does she ever tie _you_ up?” he asked, with more of a petulant tone than Hancock really deserved.  
  
“Sure. Weren’t convinced, to start with, but she won me over. It’s… interesting.” He studied him. “Guess she don’t need to tie you up, huh? She can just tell you not to move.”  
  
“She could, if she ever allowed herself to,” Charon admitted, and rolled his eyes. He was starting to feel a little… light. Tingly. He shook his head. “If you can convince her it isn’t a fucking war crime if she gives me an order in bed, I would be grateful.”  
  
Hancock snorted a laugh.   
  
“You into that shit, Ferryman? Gotta admit, I’ve wondered about the possibilities of that contract of yours. Sexually, I mean. Sounds like it’d be hot as hell.”  
  
Charon grimaced, and avoided his gaze.  
  
“I regret starting this conversation,” he said.   
  
“Hey, I’m gonna get _details,_ remember? Hot, sweaty —”  
  
“ _Why_ did I agree to that?”  
  
“’Cause Sunshine was sittin’ there all naked and allurin’.”  
  
“I admit… it was more fun than I thought it would be. The game you were playing.”   
  
He reached again for the glass Hancock had poured him, and was about to take a drink when his eyes caught on the ice cubes floating in the bourbon. He lifted the glass to the light, eyeing the ice cubes suspiciously. He felt more… _relaxed_ than he should. And _much_ more talkative.   
  
“Did you drug me again?”  
  
“I _asked_ you if you wanted ice.”  
  
Charon suppressed a sigh. Ah, fuck it. He was getting high tonight anyway. He tipped a mouthful of bourbon down his throat, and turned the glass in his hands.   
  
“Fine,” he rumbled. “You want to know? Games like that, with other people… I have never had an employer I wanted to fuck before. You don’t understand the level of _control_ they have over me. All the time, every moment. You can't know what that feels like. With other employers…” His face twisted in disgust. “No. I am not _into that_. I hated their control over me. I never trusted them. But with her? I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I _meant_ that it bothers her when she gives an order accidentally. I wish it wouldn’t.”  
  
“Just be glad you’ve gotten _this_ far. She spent forever all concerned about bein, y’know,” he waved a hand, “ _rapey_. If you hadn’t made a move back at the Slog she’d still be keepin’ her mouth shut and thinkin’ impure thoughts.”   
  
“The mistress is not _rapey,_ ” he said, bristling.   
  
“Hey, her word, not mine.”  
  
“Still,” he grumbled, and then he hesitated. “She had… impure thoughts?”  
  
Hancock grinned at him. “Wanna know what they were? She told me some of ‘em.”  
  
“I… no.” He grimaced. “If I want to know, I will ask _her_.”   
  
Hancock chuckled. “Good call.”   
  
 He took a mouthful of bourbon, and tapped his fingers against his glass.  
  
“I wanted to thank you.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For the things you said. A long time ago, at the Slog.” He met his eyes, just for a moment, and then looked away. “Do you remember? You told me I should be fighting and I thought you meant the contract. The orders.” He shook his head. “I cannot fight orders. But I was wrong. You meant… they were in my head, all those people. Those employers.”  
  
“I ain’t sure what I meant,” he said, a roughness in his voice. “I say a lot of shit. Half the time you’re lucky if I remember it the next day.” He grimaced, and sipped at his drink. “But… You say you ain’t a slave but then you talk about… having a _purpose,_ and _serving,_ shit like that… Like it’s _meant_ to be that way. Ain’t no one _meant_ to be a slave.”  
  
“It has always been that way. I know my purpose. That is… it’s like…” He hesitated. “You think everyone should be free. You _believe_ that. Freedom, choice, a place to belong. It is part of how your mind is shaped. That is the contract. The contract is a part of me, it’s in my nerves, my head. I cannot fight the contract. It says I must obey, I must protect. But that is _all_ it says.” He shook his head. “It does not say that I cannot talk back, that I must grovel at their fucking feet. That was other people. The employers, _they_ did that. They told me what I should not say, that I must walk a step behind and not look them in the eye, that I deserved to do what they made me do. That I should feel nothing, that I _was_ nothing. And I believed them.”  
  
Hancock exhaled, like he had been holding a breath for a long time.  
  
“Took you long enough.”  
  
“Yes. I know you were frustrated with me” He leant forward in his seat, his elbows on his knees. “It took me a long time to realise what you meant. You told me you’d be fighting it, and I thought you were a fool. But you weren’t talking about the contract, the orders. You meant _them_. The contract never told me I was nothing. I should have fought them.”  
  
“I dunno about that,” Hancock said slowly. “Maybe you’d be dead now, if you had. Sometimes you gotta wait for your moment. Anyway, there’s different kinds of fighting. It just always bothered me that you internalised that shit. Made it a part of who you are.” He curled his lip. “Like the way you call her the m-word. No masters in Goodneighbor.”  
  
“I _choose_ to call her that. It’s my choice.”  
  
“Yeah, but it weren’t _always_ your choice. You didn’t start calling her that because she _earned_ it.”  
  
“No,” he admitted. “But words like that, _mistress, sir,_ they are impersonal words. I use them because they provide distance. The master is a role, not a person.”  
  
“But you still call her that now,” Hancock pointed out. “She ain’t impersonal.”  
  
“No. Now… I don’t know. It means something different now.”  
  
He shrugged. “You live your life however the fuck you want. I just don’t want someone else getting any wrong ideas about what we tolerate in Goodneighbor.”  
  
“You do not need to worry. If someone gets the wrong idea, I will correct them.” He straightened his back, shifting his the stiffness from his shoulders. “I may not be free, but I can make sure others are free.”  
  
This seemed to satisfy him. Hancock nodded to himself, and lit a cigarette, tossing the packet onto the coffee table with a gesture suggesting Charon could help himself.  
  
“What made you finally realise you ain’t the world’s punching bag?” he asked, leaning back to exhale a lungful of smoke towards the ceiling. “Sunshine say something?”  
  
“No.  _I_ said something. And then I wondered why.”  
  
Hancock nodded again, apparently satisfied, although Charon thought he recognised a spark of curiosity in his dark eyes.   
  
If he had planned to ask what it was, he never got the chance. A moment later Sloan all but fell through the door, one arm around MacCready. The both of them were giggling like teenage girls.  
  
“You have fun at the bar, Sunshine?” Hancock asked her with an indulgent smile.  
  
“We did,” she said, knocking her hip against MacCready’s. “It’s been ages since I saw Robbie.”  
  
“ _Forever,_ ” MacCready agreed, detaching himself from Sloan with a grin. “And she owed me.”  
  
“I didn’t owe you! Anyway I got you some drinks.”  
  
“It doesn’t count if you aren’t paying for ‘em! Charlie never charges you.”  
  
“Still got you drunk, didn't I?”  
  
She leant over to pick up the glass of rum sitting on the end of the table but Hancock caught her hand instead, rising to slip an arm around her waist and pull her close as if he was going to waltz her across the room. There was a grin on his face that made something tingle at the back of Charon’s head.   
  
“Ah ah, Sunshine, not for you,” he said. “That’s full of my special ice. I’ll get you your own.”  
  
He let go of her and turned away to retrieve a bottle from the counter, and she shivered. She and MacCready exchanged a frantic mimed conversation culminating in MacCready fanning himself and falling backwards onto the sofa. Charon felt as if he had missed something significant. He looked first at Sloan, then MacCready on the sofa beside him, who gave him a grin that only reinforced his suspicions.  
  
“Say, Sunshine,” Hancock said, turning back to them with her drink in his hand, “you seen Deegan at the bar?”  
  
“Yeah. He looked _really_ focused on his drink. I think the Cabots must’ve died.”  
  
“I was thinkin’…” He slipped his arm back around her waist, and handed her her drink. “You wanna invite him to play around later?”  
  
Charon growled, deep in his throat, and Hancock shot him a look of delight.  
  
“You wanna come too? We could triple-team her!”  
  
MacCready let out a bark of laughter, and Charon scowled at him.  
  
“I do not like you when you are drunk,” he said.  
  
“You don’t even like me much when I’m sober!” MacCready said, laughing.  
  
Sloan laughed as well, her eyes dancing. “He’s got you there, Charon.” Then she knocked her hip against Hancock’s, and dropped her voice a little. “Leave him out of your grand plans until he decides he wants in, huh?”  
  
Hancock gave a shrug, and pulled her with him over to the other couch.   
  
“Hey, his loss. But Deegan… you like him, right?”  
  
She ducked her head, a small grin parting her lips.   
  
“Okay, sure. We could… yeah. Sounds kind of exciting.”  
  
Charon did not know how to feel about sharing her with Deegan. He knew it was just for the night, but even so… Hancock, fine; he had been here first, and they were good together, they fit. He was only just starting to get used to the whole situation without someone _else_ getting involved. He didn’t know Deegan well enough, didn’t trust him, but he supposed Hancock would be there. He trusted _him,_ at least, to keep her from harm.  
  
“You will make sure he doesn’t hurt her,” he growled.  
  
Hancock’s eyes flashed, and he grinned in a predatory way that Charon found unnerving.   
  
“Sure you don’t want to watch? There ain’t no substitute for being there.”  
  
“As the airlines used to remind us,” Sloan said, taking a mouthful of rum. “Another time, though, right? I’m not up for an extended romp tonight. Not after earlier. And… like, all this week.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” MacCready said, grinning. “Gloat.”  
  
Charon elected to ignore this.  
  
“You did not invite Valentine?” he said instead. He thought they would have; Charon could have done with someone a little more reserved to talk to. In social situations he was used to being the person standing menacingly in the corner. Sloan he was fine with, even Hancock, now, but the more people around, the less he felt like he belonged there.   
  
“Nah, Nicky doesn’t really go for our — what did you call ‘em, Sunshine?”  
  
“Bacchanals.”  
  
“Yeah, them.”  
  
“What’s a Bacchanal?” MacCready asked her.  
  
“Greek orgy.” She sipped demurely at her drink.  
  
“Is that… different from a regular orgy? More oil?”  
  
“Less sex.” She grinned. “Believe it or not. Don’t look so disappointed, ‘Creaders. We’ll pick you up someone hot from the bar later.”  
  
“You’d better.”  
  
“Any gender preferences for the evening?”  
  
“Not really,” he said, reaching across to steal her glass. He noticed Charon looking at him, and grinned. “What, you thought I was only into guys? I had a wife once, you know.”  
  
“I didn’t know,” he said. He remembered Sloan mentioning a child, but not a wife. Although, now he thought about it, a woman would have had to be involved at _some_ point in proceedings. “What happened to her?”  
  
“Oh — uh…” He took a mouthful of rum and swallowed hard. “Actually, she was torn apart by ferals.”  
  
Charon felt a chill. “W-what?”   
  
“I mean, I didn’t exactly stop to watch, or anything. Just grabbed my son and ran. But uh… yeah. You know what the subway system’s like in DC. Ferals all over the f— the dang place.” A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he shook his head.  
  
“ _Fuck_. That happened to you, but you spend your time with ghouls?”  
  
“Well, yeah. Not like _you_ did it.”  
  
“…But we _could_.”  
  
“I am not drunk enough for this conversation,” Sloan said, taking her glass back from MacCready.  
  
“You couldn’t,” he said, glancing back over to Charon. “‘Cause she’s already dead.”  
  
Charon’s lip curled. “This,” he said, “is why humans hate us. The ferals, and the way we look.” He jabbed a finger at the man. “You are a sick boy.”  
  
MacCready gave him a crooked grin.   
  
“Oh, _I’m_ sick because I’ve slept with ghouls, but _she’s not?_ Ferals scare the crap out of her!”  
  
“She is also sick,” he replied. “I have just chosen to overlook that.”  
  
“Ha! Yeah, I’ll bet you have. Wait…” He narrowed his eyes. “Was that a _joke?_ Sloan! He made a joke!”  
  
She giggled. “Yeah, he does that, sometimes. Who knew, right?” She swallowed the last of her rum, and held the glass up to the light, making a face. “Come on, you dickhead. Come get your own glass so you don’t keep drinking all my rum.”  
  
Charon’s eyes followed the sway of her hips as she rose to make herself another drink, MacCready following at her heels. He heard Hancock’s chuckle, and shot him a frown.  
  
“You sure you don’t want to join in?” Hancock drawled. “It’ll be fun.”  
  
“No,” he said, shifting on the couch. “Although…”  
  
“ _Please_ finish that sentence,” Sloan said, as she and MacCready returned to their seats.  
  
“…I have realised,” he said to Hancock, “that you can do things with her I cannot.”  
  
“Such as…?”  
  
“Spank her.”  
  
Hancock looked up towards the ceiling as if thanking each and every angel, and then grinned at him.   
  
Charon felt a little awkward.  
  
“She just… has a good ass for spanking,” he explained.   
  
“I understand. But hey, why stop at spanking? I found this riding crop at the Downs...”  
  
“You realise if you actually _harm_ her, I will need to stop you,” Charon warned him, and turned to cuff the giggling MacCready upside the head.  
  
“No, you won’t,” Hancock said, still looking far too pleased. “Sunshine can just tell you not to.”  
  
“This is meant to be _fun_.”  
  
“Oh, it will be, Ferryman, don’t worry.”  
  
  


 

 


	72. Chems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon is really getting the hang of talking to Hancock.

Charon studied the drugs spread out on Hancock’s table for a good half an hour before he made a decision. Chems were tools, not recreation. But Sloan wanted to get him high, and they were safe. Why the hell not? A couple of pills wouldn’t turn him into a chem-head. Besides, those fucking ice cubes were stronger than he’d thought and he was already feeling a little… well, certainly not _giggly,_ he had never giggled in his _life,_ but definitely more inclined towards smiling than usual.  
  
At last he tipped a couple of daytrippers into his palm, and washed them down with a mouthful of bourbon.   
  
The initial kick was all but orgasmic, a release and a euphoria that almost brought tears to his eyes. He _basked_. It was like the sun had come out, like if he went up to the roof and stepped off he might actually fly. No fucking wonder Hancock was high all the damn time. Was this what freedom felt like?   
  
“Daytripper’s a good choice,” Hancock drawled when he finally opened his eyes. “Makes everything feel good again.”   
  
Charon nodded, running his hands back through his hair.   
  
“Yes,” he said, and cleared his throat. “What did you take?”  
  
“Smooth operator.”  
  
“…What does that do?”  
  
“You know how Daddy-O makes you kinda wish everyone would fuck off?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“….Well, it does. Don’t like that part. Harshes my buzz. So I mix it with somethin’ else. Usually alcohol’ll do the trick but I’m feelin’ companionable.” He pulled a vibrant, glowing syringe from his pocket and tossed it to Sloan. “Hit me,” he said with a grin.  
  
Charon tilted his head as he watched her administer the chem. This was something she had quite obviously done before, but instead of her usual quick efficiency she moved with a slow purpose. She took Hancock’s wrist in one hand and rolled up his sleeve, her fingers traced up the inside of his arm, where she pierced the skin and slid the needle into his vein. It struck Charon as a strangely intimate thing. Each knowing the steps, slow and measured like a dance.   
  
“What will you take?” he asked her.  
  
She shrugged. “Maybe mentats. Maybe daytrippers.”  
  
“Don’t like you taking daytrippers,” Hancock grumbled.   
  
She gave him a smile that suggested they had been over this before and the argument had not yet been won.   
  
“You want me to go get Fahrenheit to keep an eye on her?” MacCready asked.  
  
She snorted a laugh. “You think I need a trip-sitter?”  
  
“Well —”  
  
“ _Fine,_ I’ll take a fucking mentat.” She clapped her hands. “Toss me the berry ones, ‘Creaders.”  
  
Charon didn’t know quite what he had expected when he had come over here. To take some mentats and watch the lightshow, probably, while Sloan told them everything she knew about astrophysics. But it had been different, the last time they’d taken chems together, on Sinjin’s trail. He hadn’t trusted Hancock at all back then. Sloan had been anxious for her friend, and Charon had been put-out that Hancock was tagging along.   
  
Now the mood was lighter. MacCready changed things somehow, and he knew Hancock better, and he looked at Sloan in a different way. He still felt a little awkward, but not as much as he thought he would.  
  
And the daytrippers were fucking fantastic.  
  
It must have been late in the evening when there was a knock at the door, and a guard ushered Edward Deegan inside. He looked confused, and more than a little drunk, though from the set of his jaw Charon guessed he was trying to hide it.  
  
“You wanted something, Mayor Hancock?” Deegan asked, straightening his back.  
  
“You did?” Sloan asked, perched on the arm of the couch.  
  
“Just thought I oughtta be a better host,” he told her with a grin. “Don’t want someone like him wallowing in the bar all alone. So, Deegan! My man. I got an idea that’ll brighten your day.”  
  
Deegan gave him a sour look.   
  
“Whatever it is, the answer’s no.”  
  
Hancock ignored this. “Two words,” he said. “House party.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Ah, come on, Deegan. I know you got a killer pool table. And I wanna try out one of those showers Sunshine keeps tellin’ me about. I just _know_ they’d be amazing when you’re high.” He grinned. “She loves your showers. Don’t ya, Sunshine?”  
  
“I do,” she said with a self-conscious little smile. “Sorry, Deegan, it wasn’t my idea.”  
  
“Listen,” he said, shifting his weight and swaying slightly from side to side, “I just came here to get drunk. And get out of that damn house for a while.”  
  
“And we’re here to help,” Hancock said magnanimously. “I got rum, bourbon, other shit lying around. Chems. Take your pick. My treat.”  
  
Deegan eyed him suspiciously, and then shot a look at Sloan, who smiled.  
  
“Really,” she said softly. “It’s okay. You’re _invited_.”  
  
“Well…” He glanced around the room, clearly uneasy. “…All right.”  
  
“Take a seat. Take a pill.” Hancock hopped up off the couch and swaggered over to the bench, bending to read the labels of the bottles he had stacked along the back wall. “What’ll it be? Vodka? Rum? You seem like a rum man.”  
  
“Whatever’s open,” Deegan mumbled.  
  
He loosened up a little after another drink — no doubt due to the mountain of ice in his glass — and as Charon had done earlier, he wandered around the periphery of the room. Charon watched him with a detached sort of interest as he reached the desk, and bent over the book.  
  
“This is Ginsberg,” he said after a moment, something like awe in his voice. “Wasn’t this banned by the time of the Great War?”  
  
“Yup.” Sloan perched herself on the arm of Hancock’s chair, kicking her feet as she watched him. “You a Ginsberg fan, Edward?”  
  
He shrugged, turning the pages. “You know Wilhelmina wouldn’t have let that sort of thing in the house. Emogene had a stash, though. Kerouac, a couple of Beat collections.” He shook his head, a smile easing across his face. “Never found a copy of Howl. Where did you get this?”  
  
“In the library, buried under a pile of burnt and ruined books. She never sent you out to find some?”  
  
“No. She preferred bartering them from people. I’m not sure it would have occurred to her to send me to the library. _Peasants_ use libraries.”   
  
“Of course,” she said, and snorted. “You know… I’ve wondered a few times whether we used to see each other around. Before the war, I mean.”  
  
“Did you ever go to the theatre?” He set the book down on the desk and turned to lean back against it.   
  
“Yeah! My boss had a season pass, he used to lend it to Nate and me when he couldn’t make it. God, that’s funny. We could have been watching the same show.”  
  
“The Cabots had a box. I used to… Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “It was a long time ago.”  
  
“Maybe for you,” she said with a dreamy smile. She toyed with her glass, knocking the ice against the side. “I’ve been thinking about the theatre. It still looks beautiful. Two hundred years, and those curtains are still hanging. Something should be done with the place, you know?” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Charon and I cleared out a bunch of raiders who were in there watching — There was this guy, running cage fights. Had a junkie fighting people with baseball bats and shit. Still not sure what their deal was. Pretty sure they were fucking.”  
  
“They were _not_ fucking,” Charon said.  
  
“They were totally fucking.”  
  
Deegan cleared his throat. “You like poetry, Sloan? What’s your favourite poem?”  
  
“Ginsberg’s up there,” Sloan said, allowing the change of subject without a fight. “I got pretty into Edna St Vincent Millay in college. You know her?”  
  
“Name’s familiar.”  
  
She tipped her head back, glass dangling from her fingers. “’Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave. Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.’”  
  
“I like that,” said Hancock slowly. “Kind of… fierce.”  
  
“Yes. She was.”  
  
“You gonna read us poetry all night?” He flashed her a grin. “I want to hear a song.”  
  
A smile stretched across her face, slow, like she had just had a terrible idea.  
  
“A song? Okay. I know just the thing. Maybe Deegan will remember it.”   
  
“No promises,” Deegan said, sitting down next to Charon with a glass of bourbon.  
  
Sloan cleared her throat, and straightened her back.   
  
_“When you attend a funeral, it is sad to think that sooner or… later those you love will do the same for you… And you may have thought it tragic, not to mention other adjec…tives to think of all the weeping they will do… but don’t you worry…”_  
  
Deegan made a strange sort of noise, and Charon looked over to see his hairless brows were furrowed, as if he was trying to work out where he had heard this song before.  
  
 _“No more ashes, no more sackcloth, and an armband made of black cloth, will someday nevermore adorn a sleeve…”_  
  
“Oh, my god,” Deegan muttered, and he started to laugh.  
  
 _“…For if the bomb that drops on you, gets your friends and neighbours too… there’ll be nobody left behind to grieve!”_  
  
MacCready made a choking noise, and clamped a hand across his mouth to keep from spitting his rum across the room.   
  
“Are you serious?” he spluttered after he had managed to swallow. “See, boss, this is why people think you’re a lunatic. You can’t sing ironic protest songs after the nuclear apocalypse.”  
  
She grinned at him, and launched into the next verse, the rhythm of the song changing.  
  
 _“And we will all go together when we go, what a comforting fact that is to know! Universal bereavement — an inspiring achievement! — yes we all will go together when we go. We will all bake together when we bake, there’ll be nobody present at the wake! With complete participation in that grand incineration, nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak!”_  
  
“This is horrific,” Charon scolded her.   
  
She did not seem to think so. She was barely holding it together well enough to sing, and even Deegan had his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.  
  
“ _We will all char together when we char!”_ she sang, breaking into giggles after every second line. _“…and let there be no moaning of the bar! Just sing out a Te Deum when you see that ICBM, and the party will be come-as-you-are! We will all burn together when we burn, there’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn! When it’s time for the fallout and St Peter calls us all out, we’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn!”_  
  
“MacCready is right, woman, there is something wrong with you,” Charon said, and she lost the battle with her laughter.  
  
The last of the ice had broken after that. Perhaps it was the daytripper, or whatever it was Hancock put in that ice, but things ceased to matter quite so much. Charon _relaxed,_ moment by moment. He might not be any good at this sort of thing, but perhaps he didn’t have to be. Sloan understood the sort of person he was, and he would have had to admit that by this point, Hancock did too. They wanted him here anyway. He did not have to be the looming figure in the corner of the room tonight.   
  
Even Deegan had relaxed, after a few more drinks. He’d started singing something, _there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in…_ soft and sad and hopeful, and Sloan had sung along, her eyes shining. MacCready made some crack afterwards about rasping ghoul voices that made Deegan laugh, and Sloan flashed him a grin.  
  
“I’ll find a copy of one of his songs one day,” she told MacCready. “After five hundred tons of whisky and a million cigarettes, you’d sound like a ghoul too.”  
  
Some hours later found them drunk and sleepy, sprawled around Hancock’s room. Deegan had fallen asleep on the couch, MacCready was passed out at the bottom of Hancock’s bed, but Charon needed some distance from them all. He took up a position on the small balcony overlooking the town, leaning against the door jamb. The cool of the early morning air was sobering, and the softness of the breeze a sweet pleasure as the last of the radiation and the daytrippers left his system.   
  
He felt good. Better than he had since the bunker. The thoughts of that place had been only a whisper in his head, drowned out by the booze and the chems and the radiation, and it was easy to understand why some people returned to them again and again. _He_ wouldn’t; he didn’t like to be dependant on anything outside himself. But he understood why others did.  
  
Sloan and Hancock were the only others awake.She was tired, languid, draped over Hancock’s thighs as he sat in the middle of the bed. At some point he had lost his shirt — now he thought about it, Charon couldn’t quite remember when — and was he looking down at her with an unusual softness as he sifted his fingers through her hair.   
  
She turned, reaching up from his lap to trail a finger along his jaw before letting her arm drop behind her head.  
  
“Hey, gorgeous.”  
  
“Hey, Sunshine.”  
  
“You know they were gonna build you a tower?”  
  
He blinked down at her.   
  
“…What?”  
  
“Back in the before-time. They had plans for this building; there were a couple of articles in the paper about it. You know. Artist’s sketch. It looked beautiful. Shiny. Tallest building in New England, it was going to be.” She smothered a yawn. “John Hancock Tower.”  
  
“Heh. Not named after _me,_ sweetheart. The _other_ John Hancock.”  
  
“Pretty sure it was you,” she mumbled.  
  
“How could it be? I wasn’t _born_ yet.”  
  
“Why would they name it after the _other_ guy?”  
  
“Sunshine, I named _myself_ after him. He was responsible for some pretty good shit.”  
  
“Well yeah, but like, come on. Between the two of you? No contest.”  
  
He chuckled, and brushed the back of a finger against her cheek. “You are high as hell.”  
  
“Yeah, well… In vino veritas.”  
  
“I don’t know what that means, sweetheart. I’m gonna get some fresh air, okay? Don’t wait up for me.”  
  
He eased her off his lap and made his way across the room to join Charon on the small balcony, leaning his bare forearms on the old wood. They stood in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the cool morning breeze. Then Hancock sighed, and bent his head.  
  
“You ever feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?” he asked him.  
  
“What, with her?” Charon looked back over his shoulder at her, curled up in a tangle of blankets. “Once. I expected her to punish me, and she didn’t. I did not enjoy the tension of the waiting.”  
  
“Jesus, _no_.” His lip curled. “Like she’s so much better than anything you deserve, and the universe is goin’ to balance the books at some point.”  
  
Charon bared his teeth in a humourless grin.  
  
“No. I know what this will cost me. It will cost me everything I have ever had, because that is what she is. She is everything.” He looked out towards the darkened windows of the warehouses, and huffed a sigh. “Human lives are short,” he said, mostly to himself. “I know how the books will be balanced.”   
  
“…Yeah. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I let this happen. Never thought about the whole _lifespan thing_ back when we started. Didn’t think about it _at all_. _She_ brought it up.”  
  
Charon looked down at the shorter ghoul, thoughtful.   
  
“I spent a long time thinking that,” he said. “I should not have done this, it will cost me too much… but I think I am greedier than you are. Or perhaps just older. I will take any scrap of happiness I am offered. It will not come around again.”  
  
Hancock sighed.   
  
“How’s a guy like _me_ get this lucky, you know?”  
  
Charon hesitated.   
  
“Are you… all right?”  
  
“Yeah, I just — it gets overwhelming sometimes. I don’t know how to deal with that. Like, oh, they should’ve named a building after you. The biggest fucking building in New England. A hundred and eighty years before you were born.”  
  
Charon chuckled. “She thinks you are worth it.”  
  
“Yeah, well. She’s wrong.”  
  
He ducked his head, looking down at the pavement below, and Charon frowned.  
  
“At some point, you need to stop blaming yourself for things outside your control.”  
  
“Yeah? Fuck you.”  
  
He snorted a laugh. “You did more than anyone else to help the ghouls from Diamond City. Everyone who survived thinks you’re fucking Christ himself. You cannot save everyone. _She_ knows that.”  
  
“Did I ever tell you about Vic?”  
  
The name seemed vaguely familiar, but that was all. Charon shook his head.  
  
“Vic used to run this place before I did, and he was… he was a nasty piece of shit. He used to let his boys let off some steam once in a while, keep 'em in line. Keep  _us_ in line. Tried to get everyone inside, but you couldn’t always… anyway. I was a coward back then. All I did was get stoned and hope the next hit was gonna kill me. When Vic sent out his boys, I just used to keep my head down like everyone else, hope they didn’t pick me to be their little pet project.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and swallowed. “One time… someone said something to them. A ghoul, one of the ones I’d led here from Diamond City. They cracked him open like a can of cram on the pavement. _I_ brought him here, and then I did nothing when they killed him. I just _let it happen._ ”  
  
“If you had done nothing we would not be here now. You took this place back from those men and you gave it to the people they terrorised.”  
  
“Didn’t help the poor sap they killed though, did it?”  
  
“That does not make it _nothing_.” He shook his head. “You came to find me. You help people without having a reason to.”  
  
“You don’t need a reason to help people,” Hancock said testily. “You need a reason to _not_ help them.”  
  
“This is not a common perspective.”  
  
“So? Lotta people are shitbags.”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
Hancock smirked at him. “This shit ain’t relative. It ain’t hard to _not murder_ innocent people. It ain’t hard to share your fucking water with someone dying of thirst. No one gets a medal for being better than the average asshole.”  
  
“ _She_ would give you a medal,” Charon told him, a trace of smugness creeping into his voice. “That is the point. You think she has bad judgement?”  
  
“Well, yeah, sometimes.”  
  
“Really?” He blinked in surprise.  
  
“Pretty early on I had to make her promise not to jump off’ve anything higher than her head. I said to her, sister, if you want a thrill, take a chem. Don’t get your rocks off throwing yourself off the top of buildings. Used to scare the crap out of me. Like if I looked away for two seconds she’d jump off a cliff.”  
  
“…Why would she…”  
  
“Oh, who the hell knows. I think she went through a period of… some kind of mourning thing. Lost her sense of self-preservation. Bad judgement. That shit, the way she won’t tell ya if she’s cold…” He looked down into the town below them, brooding. “Plus there’s the whole _in love with me_ thing. I get why she’d want to sleep with me, obviously, but not really why she thinks I’m worth some kind of commitment.” He peered sidelong up at Charon. “Seriously, you ain’t afraid one day she’s going to wake up and realise she’s too good for us?”  
  
“No,” he said honestly. He shrugged. “One day she might kick me out of her bed, but she is still stuck with me. She wouldn’t sell my contract, unless she became a very different person.”  
  
“And you’d be fine with that? Her not bein’ your girl any more?”  
  
“What right do I have to ask anything of her?”  
  
“I mean, at this point? You serious?”  
  
“You and I are not the same. You are her equal. I am not.” He held up a hand. “Don’t say whatever bullshit it is you’re about to say. I am _not_. I never will be. It is nothing to do with how she treats me; I know how she feels. It is the imprint in my head. The employer is still the employer.”  
  
“I guess you’d still get to hang out with her,” Hancock grumbled. “She don’t have to take me nowhere.”  
  
Charon snorted. “She wants to build you a _tower_. You have nothing to worry about.”  
  
“Do you know what it meant? That thing she said?”  
  
“In vino veritas? It means… truth in wine, something like that. That what we say when we are drunk is what we truly mean.”  
  
“You think that’s true?”  
  
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Although perhaps what we truly mean while we are drunk is not what we always mean.”  
  
Hancock nodded, then straightened with a sigh.  
  
“Well, fuck it. I’m going to bed,” he said. “You coming?”  
  
“I… what?”  
  
He shrugged. “It’s a big enough bed. MacCready’s already in there. No funny stuff, cross my heart.”  
  
For some reason, Hancock’s reassurances always seemed more suspicious than the original suggestion had been. Charon shook his head.   
  
“No. No sleep.”  
  
“You’ve slept in Goodneighbor before, right? It’s fine. We’ve got plenty of guards. Walls, n’ shit…”  
  
Charon took a deep breath.  
  
“I tried sleeping, at her house. It… did not go well.”  
  
“…Uh, I might have some chems for that…”  
  
“I do not need sleep.”  
  
“If you say so, Ferryman. Offer’s open. Or there’s the sofa. Deegan’s sprawled over half’ve it but you can kick him off.”  
  
He turned, and the light from the street outside hit him in a way that picked out the ridges of the torn skin on his back. Some of the scars, on one shoulder, almost looked like they formed a regular pattern. Intersecting lines; white, shining, not the kind of scars that came from turning ghoul. Then he moved, and they disappeared, lost among all the rest.  
  
Charon hesitated, and Hancock caught his eye.  
  
“What?”  
  
“…Nothing. Goodnight.”  
  
The town was quiet; it was late enough that even Goodneighbor was asleep. He took his time making his way back to their room at the Rexford, turning the evening over and over in his mind.  
  
It was a bizarre thing, to be invited to something like that. For his presence to be something that was actively _wanted,_ not just passively tolerated. He was quiet, he was reserved, he was not the kind of person others wanted to spend time with. And he couldn’t decide if he had enjoyed himself.   
  
Charon was not practised in _fun._ Fighting could be fun, and sex was fun, but parties, as a concept, were a bit beyond him. The chems had helped, of course. Without them he would have been even more awkward and out of place. At least, with enough alcohol and rad water to loosen his tongue, he had made a vague approximation of someone who understood how to socialise.   
  
He had enjoyed watching the mistress enjoy herself, anyway. That was something. It always pleased him to watch her with others, like in the Third Rail, where she chatted and laughed and _shone_. It made him wonder what was she like in Diamond City. She hadn’t gone out much in the last week they’d spent there, but earlier, another time, she’d spent hours at a bar with friends. A part of him wanted to see that. That place was so different to Goodneighbor. What was she like among those people? Did they like there there as much as they did here?

At the very least, the evening had drowned out the noise in his head. That alone made it worth the time. He shook his head at himself as he climbed the Rexford’s stairs. Fuck it — for all he’d felt a bit awkward, he _had_ enjoyed himself. He was just being stubborn about it. He wouldn’t do it again tomorrow, no, but eventually? Why not? Sooner or later he would need to stop expecting some kind of reprisal just for having a good time.   
  
There _was_ one thing that gnawed at him, though. Those scars on Hancock’s back, as he’d turned away… there was something off about them. They bothered him, lingering in his mind, and he sat down at the end of the bed he shared with Sloan and tried to work out why.   
  
Even with the prevalence of stimpaks, it was rare to live long in the wasteland without acquiring a few scars. That in itself was not unusual. These ones, though… there was almost a _pattern_ to them. A cross-hatching. A burn, maybe? Had he fallen onto a hot grate? But burns didn’t usually leave sharp lines like that. It looked like knife-work to him, and Charon had seen enough to recognise it.   
  
It was a while before he realised he was resisting the idea that they were intentional. He had always seen Hancock as a rakish youth, full of himself, who acted without thinking. There was more to him than that — Charon was well aware of that now — but somehow a part of him still thought of Hancock that way. Childish. Impulsive. A man who built up suffering for himself, but who had never really experienced it.   
  
And now he understood how wrong that image was, because those scars weren’t scars from battle. They weren’t a laser blast or a knife in the back. Someone had held him down, and carved them in.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was the first half of this chapter necessary? No. Did I include it anyway so I would finally be able to make reference to Tom Lehrer? Yes, yes I did.


	73. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon has things on his mind. But at least they're not all about the bunker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays everyone!

  
It was still, according to Sloan, his “week off”. It was in fact growing closer to three, and a part of Charon was getting restless. But he knew he wasn’t ready to be out on the road again yet. He was still caught up in his head. There were things he hadn’t yet dealt with, thoughts and emotions that rose unbidden in dark corners of the night or, worse, in the bar in early evening, surrounded by people. Some of these things were connected to a past he didn’t remember. A reaction to a sight, a sound, or a thought that was too visceral to be caused by that alone, but that he could determine no source for. The bunker had been like a boulder falling into a lake, or an earthquake; it had stirred up the sediment in his mind.   
  
And he couldn’t bear to sleep. Sloan had split her nights between Hancock and Charon, sleeping curled up next to him in her room at the Rexford. Those nights, he had read until the words blurred on the page and he found himself thrust into another moment, one where he was oozing onto a concrete floor, or staring into a yao-guai’s mouth. Sometimes it was just untethered emotion, hitting him like a sledgehammer to the chest, and he’d wept silently, face contorted into a grimace, fists pressed up against his eyes.  
  
He didn’t know how to tell her about these things. So he didn’t. He trusted she’d understand as much as she needed to, with her sharp eyes and her experience.   
  
The other nights he roamed. Sometimes he went down to the bar, or bought a bottle of rotgut from the Rexford and got quietly drunk. Once he even went out in search of the skinny smoothskin girl, restless for a fuck uncomplicated by emotion and unsure if he really wanted to find her. He didn’t. He slunk into an alleyway to lean up against the wall, and hoped she was safe inside one of the warehouses, not outside the city walls. Or worse.  
  
It was, he would have had to acknowledge, better here than in Diamond City. Goodneighbor at least was full of things to do, of people to meet and little stories to watch play out in the bar or the streets. It was easier to distract himself. There was more to think about. In particular, he found his mind wandering to Hancock, that night they’d all gotten high. It gnawed at him.  
  
“He has scars. On his back.”  
  
He was lying on their bed at the Rexford, his eyes wandering across the stained ceiling, Sloan stretched out beside him with a book. She didn’t even look up from the page. She knew who he meant.  
  
“Yeah,” she said. “Most people don’t notice them.”  
  
Charon pushed himself up off the bed, and cocked his head to one side.   
  
“Did they happen before he turned ghoul?” he asked her. “Or after?”  
  
She paused, her eyes wandering over the ceiling.  
  
“I’m pretty hazy on the timeline,” she said slowly. “I think after. I’m fairly sure he turned himself ghoul soon after leaving Diamond City, but… it’s really just a guess. Plus… I mean, I’m pretty sure there was a while there where he wasn’t fully aware of the passage of time.”  
  
“Hmph. How did he get them?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Charon’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “He didn’t tell you?”  
  
She shook her head. “There’s a lot of stuff he won’t talk about. Or he’ll talk about it, but only in terms of himself as the active participant. He did this, he reacted like that… not what happened to him. Generalities, not details.”  
  
“But you never _asked?_ Sloan…”   
  
“He tells me what he wants to tell me. The Vic years were bad years. I can put the pieces together. Something bad happened, and there weren’t any stimpaks, and he won’t talk about it. What else do I need to know?”  
  
Charon ground his teeth. “That is… very patient of you.”  
  
She laughed. “You really want to know, huh? You could always ask somebody else, but you need to get most people pretty drunk before they’ll talk about those times.”  
  
“He told me about Vic. A little. That he set his men on people, to let off steam.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“If it was so bad, why did people stay?”  
  
“Walls.” She shrugged. “Vic was a tyrant, but he was a known quantity. My guess is some people left, joined raider gangs or settlements out somewhere, like Wiseman’s people. But if nowhere will take you, if you’re a junkie and you’re not tough or cruel enough to hack it as a raider or a mercenary… it’s hard to make it on your own. You know that. Out there you’re dealing with deathclaws and gangs and murderers and monsters. In Goodneighbor all you were dealing with was _one_ gang. I guess it was just easier that way. Plus, I mean, this was their _home_. Goodneighbor’s been a settlement for a long time, and a lot of people had been here since way before Vic took over. Daisy and Kent, Irma, most of the people running the Rexford. They didn’t want to leave all they had behind, to be picked over by Vic’s gang.”  
  
A muscle twitched in Charon’s cheek, and he shook his head.   
  
“I understand that, but… They knew they would be attacked, outnumbered. They just sat here, and waited to be brutalised. At least outside…”  
  
“They’d be free?” Her lips curved into a wry smile. “It must piss you off, when people can avoid a situation, and they don’t. But most people aren’t as tough as you are. They knew this place, and maybe they had to watch their backs — but they still do, even today. Goodneighbor’s tough, and it’s always been tough. So, it became a little tougher for a while. Maybe there were times when they had to bar the door and keep their heads down. But apart from those bad days, they were protected. Vic’s boys’d go on a tear, and everyone would hide, and hope they’d get passed over. What were the chances they’d pick them? And then afterwards, for a while, they’d feel safe again. Because there would be a few weeks before Vic decided they needed to blow off more steam. That’s my guess. Most people don’t talk about it.”  
  
“It is sick. Worse that they would grow used to it, than if they lived always in fear. They bought their safety with their friends’ lives. Like sheep in a pen.”  
  
“Maybe,” she allowed. “Maybe they just realised they were stuck. That there was nothing they could do, no matter how much they wanted to fight back.”  
  
“So they did nothing?” He grimaced. “They accepted it.”  
  
“Yeah, they did. Are you really not seeing the parallels here…?”  
  
He looked over at her in surprise, and winced as it sank in. It was true. In his lifetime he had accepted more than he allowed himself to recognise. For years he had become the slave he had always insisted he was not, and hadn’t noticed.  
  
“Yes,” he admitted, his voice a low growl. “But it’s hard to see things when you are _in_ them.”  
  
“Yeah, it is. I understand that.” She took a deep breath. “And I think in a way, Hancock understands that too. He just… doesn’t have the patience for it. It’s an excuse, to him.”  
  
“This is why he is so angry at himself? He didn’t fight back?”  
  
“I don’t know what he did or didn’t do, back then. Probably more than he lets on. But it wasn’t enough for him.”  
  
“But he took this place,” he said, spreading his hands. “Killed the others, set the people free. Something changed.”  
  
“He became Hancock.” She waved her hand up along her side, from her hip to her head. “The coat, the hat… He found himself staring at them one day, like… a sign. He believes in signs. Follows his instincts. Back then, he wasn’t a leader, you know? He was just… some guy. A junkie, a… a wastrel. But he had ideals. John Hancock — the _original_ John Hancock —  he was a defender of the people, and that’s who John wanted to be. So that’s who he became.” She smiled to herself, but there was a sadness in it, and she looked down at her hands, picking at the bedspread. “He went a long time believing that things shouldn’t be happening, and not doing anything to stop them. Eventually, I guess he just reached breaking point. One way or another something had to be done, and no one else was doing it. I think that’s why he’s so short-tempered with people when they don’t fight. If _he_ could do it… you know? He’d vowed he’d never just stand by and watch, ever again. When other people do, it’s like… seeing a part of who he used to be.”  
  
Charon growled at the back of his throat, and shook his head.   
  
“It’s frustrating.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Hancock is… I don’t know. Tragic. Because he acts as if this was all an inevitability.”  
  
“And it wasn’t?”  
  
“He _chose_ this. All of it. Leaving Diamond City, becoming a ghoul. Staying here when he didn’t have to. Hancock could take care of himself in the wasteland, so why stay? He could have left Goodneighbor any time he wanted, and he acts like something was keeping him here. This wasn’t fate, this wasn’t something the world thrust him into. He chose this.”  
  
“He doesn’t see a lot of his life as a choice,” she said gently. “Not a _real_ choice. His exile from Diamond City might be partly self-imposed, but they didn’t like that he helped the ghouls. He wasn’t welcome there any more.”  
  
“And now he cannot go back. He _chose_ that. He chose _becoming this,_ ” he gestured to his face, “which is _insane._ He shouldn’t have done it. And the ghouls — he _chose_ to help the ghouls. He did not have to.”  
  
“And what would he be, if he hadn’t? What would you think of him then?” She studied him, her eyebrows pinched together. “It’s bad enough he couldn’t save them all.”  
  
“This is what I do not understand. He saved _some_. Why does that not matter?”  
  
She sighed. “Look, for what it’s worth, I agree with you on that. It’s that old line from... I want to say it's from the Talmud. Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire. But that’s just how he’s made, Charon. No matter what he does, his failures always eat at him. Even if they don’t look like failures to us. He’s arrogant and rebellious and cynical, and the choices he makes… they don’t always feel like choices to him. And when they are, they’re made too late. It’s instinct. He goes where he feels he’s called to go.”  
  
“So it is fate because he is built that way?”  
  
“I guess so.”  
  
“Tragic,” Charon muttered, and she grinned.  
  
“Yeah. But I love him for it.” She shook her head, picking at the bedspread again. “He _is_ proud of this place, you know. He knows he did a big thing. It’s just that there’s so many other things out in the wasteland that need fixing.”  
  
“No one can fix everything.”  
  
“I know. But if he wants to try, I’m going to help him.”  
  
Charon sighed. “Admirable,” he admitted grudgingly.   
  
“I’m glad you think so. Honestly.”  
  
“You _really_ do not care how he got the scars?” he asked her.  
  
“Of course I _care_. But I know enough. If he tells me more, I want it to be for his sake, not for mine. And if he did tell me, one day… that’s not the same as telling _you._ You understand me?” She shifted, pushing herself up into a tailor’s seat in front of him.. “You know more than most people as it is. More than nearly everyone. They don’t know who he was before, who is brother is, any of that.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“So what is it about this that makes you so curious?”  
  
Charon cringed, and raked his hands back through his patchy hair.   
  
“When we went to kill Sinjin. Do you remember?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“He said something to the hostage. Kent. He told him… something about scars, about torture. He was glib. Like it was nothing.”  
  
“And?”   
  
Her face was relaxed, like she already knew. Charon swallowed.  
  
“And I thought less of him for it. What did he know about torture?” He closed his eyes, and shook his head. “It was not my place to judge him.”  
  
“Sure it was, Charon.” When he looked at her there was a softness in her eyes, a kind of sadness. “You had as much right to judge him as anyone else. You’re very different, the two of you. I didn’t expect you to get along right away. And anyway, it was months ago. You didn’t even know him then.”  
  
“But I was wrong.”  
  
“So? Charon, why are you beating yourself up about this?”  
  
“I don’t… I don’t know.” He hesitated. “I should apologise.”  
  
“You’ll make him all prickly and defensive, so _you_ can feel better?” She raised an eyebrow.  
  
“…Fine.” He scowled at the bedspread. “You have a point.”  
  
“People are funny about scars,” she said, shifting a little closer. “Even when they’re all healed, it’s like a part of them’s not.” She laid her hand on his arm. “You want to tell me how you got yours?”  
  
“You know how,” he said, glancing down at his arm.   
  
“Yao-guai, you said. That’s all.”  
  
Charon almost _felt_ himself close up. Like his skin was hardening. He leant back, away from her.  
  
“Don’t ask me,” he rasped. “I don’t — I don’t want —”  
  
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything. I was just asking if you wanted to.” She traced a gentle finger over the new scar on his forearm. “If you want to tell me one day, I’ll listen. If you don’t, I won’t ask.”  
  
“I… yes.” He swallowed. “You can ask, smoothskin. But I… need time. Pick an older scar.”  
  
Her face relaxed into a grin. “I can’t _see_ them on you. You don’t sleep, so there’s no time to just sit there admiring you.”  
  
“ _Admiring._ ” He snorted, and shook his head.   
  
“ _Yes_ admiring.” She shifted a little closer, her hand moving up his arm. “You admire me, sometimes.”  
  
“Should I not?” he teased her, his voice low.  
  
“I like it,” she admitted. “I like the way you look at me.”  
  
He chuckled to himself, sliding an arm around her waist.  
  
“You don’t know the way I used to look at you. Before, when I thought I couldn’t have you.”  
  
“And how was that?”  
  
She didn't wait for an answer. She pushed herself up onto her knees and kissed him, her arms around his neck, her tooth grazing the torn remnants of his bottom lip. When she pulled away, she sat back on her heels, her hands lingering on his shoulders.  
  
“Do you like the way I look at you?” she wondered aloud, one finger tracing along his collarbone.  
  
Charon cleared his throat.  
  
“I… yes. You are curious, when you look at me. Always curious, never — not like other humans.”  
  
“Curious,” she allowed, “among other things. Ghouls are interesting to look at. All so different. Human skin is just, you know, smooth. Maybe freckles or scars or hair but more or less the same. Ghouls are all different.” She dropped a hand, and tugged at the hem of his shirt. “Will you show me a scar? An old one.”  
  
He slid a hand behind her head and kissed her again, briefly.  
  
“If you find one, I will tell you about it,” he said, and smirked.  
  
He let her pull off his shirt, and sat in amused patience as she searched him for scars. Her fingers were cool, dancing over the whorls of his skin as she circled around him.  
  
“Is this one here?” she asked him, tracing a line along a rib.   
  
“That?” He looked over his shoulder. “Yes. I am surprised you can still see it.”  
  
“It’s very faint. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.”  
  
“It was nothing. Someone tried to knife me. A raider, a guard, I forget.”  
  
“Looks like they _did_ knife you.”  
  
“Just a scratch. Not enough to bother with a stimpak. Not every employer was as free with them as you are.”  
  
“That had crossed my mind,” she mumbled. Her fingers roamed up his back, tracing the lines of torn flesh, until she paused above his left shoulder-blade. “Was this a bullet wound?”  
  
“There is a scar there?” He craned his head over his shoulder. “I cannot see it.”  
  
“Looks like. Round and flat. Very faint, though.” She circled a fingertip around it. “You don’t remember?”  
  
“No. It might be very old, smoothskin. Or it did not bother me enough to notice.”  
  
“A _bullet_ didn’t bother you enough to notice?”  
  
“The scar, I meant.” He sighed. Why had he let her do this? “This was a foolish idea. Now you will worry over old wounds long healed.”  
  
“I won’t. I just want to know you. The things you went through. The marks life left on you.” She straightened, and slid her arms around his neck, her cheek against the side of his head. He heard her sigh. “We’ll be able to take your stitches out soon,” she said.   
  
There was a faraway, pensive sort of lilt to her voice, and he turned his head to hers.  
  
“And?”  
  
“I just — I wish it had never happened.” She tightened her arms around his neck, her chin resting on his shoulder.   
  
“I know.”  
  
“I don’t want you to have to remember it when someone asks you about these scars in fifty years.”  
  
“No one will ask me, smoothskin.”  
  
He knew as he said it that this was the wrong thing to say. He heard her long intake of breath, felt her ribs expand against his back.  
  
“This is going to sound like an order,” she said. “But by the time it matters, nothing I said will be an order any more.”  
  
“Sloan —”  
  
“When I die, don’t give up.”  
  


 

 


End file.
